TY - BOOK AU - Huot,Jean-Louis TI - Toward the Emergence of the State in Mesopotamia PY - 2005///. N1 - 34 N2 - Urbanization began in Mesapotamia around the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Much later, at the end of the third millennium BCE, certain regions came to be organized around a capital and functioned like states. The state therefore only appeared in Lower Mesopotamia a thousand years after the beginnings of urbanization. Moreover, none of the excavated sites has yielded sufficient data to enable us to observe a steady evolution from village to town. The Uruk period, which saw many radical changes (including the beginnings of monumental architecture, towns, and writing), was not characterized by a continuous development of previously existing village sites, and the major reasons underlying the process of urbanization remain unexplained. In a way, the label “revolutionary” applies just as well—and perhaps even better—to the short Uruk period as to the long Neolithic period UR - https://shs.cairn.info/journal-annales-2005-5-page-953?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080 ER -