Between Household and State: Bureaucracy and Production in Susa II (Uruk) Susiana

This chapter examines the relationship between households, production and early state bureaucracy in Susa II (Uruk-period) Susiana through evidence from Susa and Chogha Mish. At both centres, administrative devices including seals, sealings, tags, bullae, tokens and numerical tablets occur not only in monumental or institutional contexts. Rather, they are especially well attested within domestic structures alongside evidence for storage and economic production. The embedding of bureaucratic activities within these structures suggests that households participated in wider circuits of controlled movement and exchange. Rather than representing autonomous family economies, these households appear to have operated within broader administrative networks linking production, storage, labour and redistribution. The evidence places households at the heart of the developing administrative economy of the early Susiana state and suggests that the relationships between institutions and households underpinning this economy were more flexible and entangled than conventional public–private distinctions imply.