Development of Trade

Liverani believes that the development trade was sprang forth from geographical needs in the Lower Mesopotamian alluvium, which lacked raw materials such as metals, semi-precious stones, and wood. These materials were essential to the urbanization and expansion of Uruk and many other developing centers. In order to alleviate this deficit, long distance trade and the need for merchants arose. Long distance trade has been studied through archaeological excavations of materials that are not local to the area such as seashells, metals, and semi-precious stones. Unfortunately, due to a lack of textual evidence regarding merchant relations to the central administration of Uruk, Liverani is left pulling information from around the area.
Liverani argues that central agencies required the use of specialists, or merchants, to take the surpluses locally and bring them to distant lands and perform conversions that were very unstructured due to different conversion rates in each city and the risk involved in long distance trading such as shipwrecks or bandits. In order to regulate the merchants who were free from central control after they left the city, the central agencies used accounting systems, albeit inefficient, to make sure that the conventional value of the merchandise handed over to the merchants at the beginning matched the merchandise that was returned. Exports consisted primarily of textiles, while imports consisted primarily of metals. Commerce expanded through land and water and colonies were installed on the middle and upper courses of the rivers and in the Upper Mesopotamian plains to increase trading efficiency and reduce risks.
Liverani makes several good arguments about the necessity of trade and touches upon some of the risks involved, but I would have liked to see some more about the interactions of Uruk with its trading partners.