A master narrative tends to regard the Crown in Mesopotamia as all-powerful, led by kings (and their bureaucracies) who controlled the flow of goods, services, and information. The most successful kings brought together fractious cities, disparate trouble-making groups - “ethnic” or “tribal” groups - and the unruly countryside. The mightiest of these kings constructed a territorial state and expanded this to an empire. In recent years, however, scholars are asking new questions about this narrative: In what ways were people subjects of the Crown? Why were cities fractious? How were ethnic groups in the countryside able to make trouble? Why did these states collapse?

Dispatches about research in a variety of other early states show similar patterns of unhappiness with received narratives. Also, modern archaeologists are turning from certain disco-age preoccupations of defining an essentialized ancient state and identifying it in the archaeological record to concerns about what the state does. Even newer research is concerned with what the state does not do.

This lecture considers whether an emergent counternarrative about ancient cities and states is setting the agenda for new research on ancient states globally.