Note to self 92,

I was researching the foundation of Arhada city-states, just to get a general sense of what they looked like, and I found a very informative and fascinating read. The name is "A Tale of Two Cities: the development of early Arhada city states (0-500 AD)" and it's supposed to be the early work of some important professor at the Horean International University. Unfortunately, I'm still banned from borrowing at the Uni's library because I've held that book on Early Ibandr for a bit too long – I'll just copy the abstract and some passages for future reference.

This essay analyses the emergence of the first large-scale polities within the Arhadan cultural sphere, putting together the writings of notable scholars and the archaelogical record at our disposal. The title, "A Tale of Two Cities” was chosen in reference to the sites of Kamābarha and Amadahai, two settlements which would continue to act as major actors in the region throughout the following centuries. Because of their prominence, these two cities have been chosen as case studies through which we will examine the political, cultural and social characteristics of Arhada city states in the formative period. Those first few post-dawn centuries see the emergence of other important centres, but these two examples prove to be the earliest, the most consistently documented and the only ones who maintained their preeminence in post-formative eras.

The text is divided into three main sections: the first detailing the general characteristics of urban, social and political developments within the region, the second and third delving into the specific nuances that these developments acquire in Kamābarha and Amadahai, respectively.

I thank the department of Tritonean studies at the Horean International University for their help in procuring material for this research, and Dr. Amaha Geherun for her invaluable guidance and insight.

[...]

2.a Palaces, urban settlements and their spatial characters.

Scholars of late Tritonean prehistory usually divide the development of Arhadan settlements in three main phases; the Stilt House Period (SHP), which lasted roughly until 750 BD, the courtyard house period (CHP), which covers the millenium between 750 BD and 250 AD and the palatial house period (PHP), emerging from 250 onwards, with the development of the first palatial complexes and the first signs of wide-reaching palace economies, large scale political networks of reciprocal exchange, and true suzerain-client relationships. These three periods are named after their defining building types: the main characteristic of the SHP, unsurprisigly the one for which we have less documentation, were the small, square wooden constructions built on stilts along the lake shores and wetlands, next to the paddies. This period is the longest, stretching from the early development of zizania, cattail and sagittaria cultivation; with the construction of more specialised agricultural works and the consequent emergence of a higher level of inequality within Arhada settlements, we shift to the CHP, wherein successful family units migrated away from the lakeshores into dry land and extablished a new building typology, the multifamily courtyard house, acting as a higher status dwelling. The palace is nothing more than the natural evolution of the Courtyard-house type: it is merely larger and with cellular buildings constructed within the confines of the courtyard. The general layout consists of three outbuildings: a shrine, where the clans held religious functions both for the families and for the community at large, a granary, where the harvest would be stockpiled for distribution in lean years, and a treasury, where specialised group of artisans, usually the women of the clan, created and gathered family hierlooms, which obtained a near-sacred value and acted as further insurance against difficult harvests (See chapter 4a).

The palatial typology is fairly standardised: the frame, the courtyard building, is usually two or three stories high, with the ground floor being dedicated to common rooms, the middle floor containing the apartments of the clanmen and women and the last floor, built under a steep thatch roof, hosting lower-status inhabitants: servants, guards, favourites. What is more variable, however, was the disposition of buildings inside; shrines especially assumed different typologies: the constant is in their verticality and consistent central-plan type. From pictographic and sculptural sources, we can also note that canopies, usually defined by square-plans with four columns at the four corners, were important places of gathering, where tobacco ceremonies and clan meetings were held in the hot summers of southern Tritonea.

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While it's interesting to consider the palace as a singular architectural and typological phenomenon, no discussion about the palatial type is complete without a mention about its relationship with the city at large. Built atop a hill (the term Nabaradjân, 'house of the hill', is, in fact, synonymous with palace), it acted as a centripetal force for the expansion of villages and cities, with important buildings being constructed radially from the central point of the palace and all other houses, small scale orchards and other structures being built in between. As architectural types specialised and key public buildings began to be built outside of the confines of the palace – granaries first, then shrines and storehouses – the radial composition of cities began to be even more clearly visible – in later periods those secondary "nodes" would create other radial sprawling points. "Radial cities, early settlement patterns in Arhadaland", by Dr. Amaha Geherun, provides an in-depth study of the spatiality of early, late and imperial Arhada cities.

Reminder to get that book as soon as I get paid this week – couldn't find it at the library.

This chapter had a very nice drawing (It looked better in the book) that showed an estimate of the plans of Kamābarha (A) and Amadahai (B). Amadahai was smaller, but it had quite an impressive quay leading straight into the city. The Mound of Kamābarha, on the other hand, was perhaps the most interesting thing about the city: it's one of the few ancient sites that the author had studied with an asymmetrical mound layout. Overall, I found the differences in Tritonean urban planning and that of Early Ibandr quite fascinating.

4.a Political Networks, the first states and the "Bead Bracelet" Structure.

With the growth of palaces, we can truly see the evolution of Arhada settlements change from villages, to cities, to city-states: each palace acted as a key driver for a city’s local economy; from within the various clans of the palace, the men of the clan oversaw and organised works in the paddies, allocating human resources and ensuring the harvest was safely stored in the granary. The women, on the other hand, handled the production of specialised crafts - pottery, textiles, painting and dye production being the most common ones - which would form the bulk of the treasury. This setup, which contributed to a general labour specialisation even outside the confines of the palace, greatly contributed to the growing influence of palaces in the surrounding sub-urban territory.

Archeological and archaeo-anthropological studies show that the early Zizania aquatica strains cultivated by Tritonean farmers were prone to failures, with some estimates indicating a one in six chance of failure. This insecurity was the main driver for the construction of granaries, and, later, the use of the palaces treasure as a sort of insurance against bad harvests. There is ample tangible evidence of extra-urban exchanges of luxury trade goods between palaces around the southern lakes - with them, came birchbark contracts (and, more rarely clay tablets), documenting the exchange agreements between villages. Sadly, we have very few documents of this kind, but just enough to get a clear picture of what these signified.

What looked like simple exchanges based on favours and giftgiving - which basically amounted to “I owe yous” with a precious gifts attached - quickly developed into more deliberate agreements. We find pictographic contracts detailing the exchange of zizania for corvée labour or zizania in exchange for a larger repayment over a period of several years. Often villages would repay their benefactor by providing labour until they were able to return the same quantity of zizania – other times, contracts operated over a fixed period of time. The maturation of these systems culminated in semi-permanent ties between villages and a construction of hierarchical client-patron relations. The short term contracts between polities, exchanging part of the harvest for corvées, valuable goods or interest on the repayment, became more and more drawn out, until finally long term relationships were established.

The term "Bead Bracelet network", introduced by Dr Lagor Daham in her seminal work "Early Political Relationships along the Southern Tritonean lakes: new models of political unity", is used to refer to these long strings of villages sharing some form political affiliation, each village being the client or suzerain of another one within the chain. The water-based agricultural tradition of Tritonea conditioned the developments of their urban centres as lines running paralel to the lakeshore, each with some influence over their adjoining woodland and wetlands: the creation of these ties would then follow these lines, creating complexes of neighbouring villages with varying degrees of freedoms and duties towards one other. these ties and contracts, which would be overseen by clan matriarchs, would connect all villages within a single network to the highest one.

I had to copy the map in the book, because I was having a hard time visualising it. There was also a more schematic version of it. Apparently, villages owed "fealty" (though I'm sure that's the wrong word) to bigger villages wich in turn owed "fealty" to bigger ones. It wasn't really a feudalistic setup, though. Land belonged to the single villages, who cultivated it directly – but they were essentially client cities, providing labour or artisanal goods to their suzerain, provided they would keep their granaries full in lean years. Another quote on this, and some interesting notes on the contracts between polities:

In truth, most of these ties would not be very long lasting, and could break immediately if either of the parties was unable to maintain the foundational promises of the agreement. This usually resulted in small scale warfare in which the suzerain's victory would result in an even more restrictive contract and the clients victory would signify temporary freedom from the expansion of its neighbour's political influence. Kamābarha and Amadahai were the first to estabish stable and well-maintained networks of this kind, mostly due to the fact that their prosperous positions – Kamābarha in fertile and rich land, Amadahai straddled between two lakes, controlling trade and expanding at a fast pace along two lakesides – allowed them to maintain control over nearby polities thanks to the consistency with which they were able to provide their side of the bargain and distribute parts of their abundant harvest to their clients.

[...]

The terms of the contracts themselves were extremely heterogeneous – and could be easily changed and misinterpreted. Being pictographic in nature, with imagery tied to Arhada proverb glyphs, they served more as visual aids to help the matriarchs remember the exact terms of a contract. It's a widely held belief that it's a need for specificity in birchbark contracts that led Arhada women to the development of true logographic writing in the following centuries.

This note I found particularly interesting! I'll have to read more on that.

7. Trade and external relations

One final point to be made, before we delve into the specific configurations and internal histories of our two cities, has to do with trade systems within the Arhada cultural sphere. Arhadanists and scholars of Tritonean history speak of the Formative "Northern pottery", "Middle pottery" and "Southern pottery" schools: the Arhada territory fell squarely between the Middle and Southern areas, with Kamābarha being connected to the Kemithātsan polities along the southern shore of the Sihodjivôdjo (Middle school), and thus having an closer relationship to northern and western cultures into Xanthean territories, and Amadahai being connected instead to southern cultures such as the Zonowōdjon, beyond the lake, with whom they entertained relationships in a network that extended south, beyond Tritonea proper, in the territories of the Aluwa. As such, our two case studies present very different cultural traits and influences – it must be noted, however, that the deep interrelation of Arhadan cities through the connective tissue of the lakes serves as an avenue for the exchange and merger of these two very different cultural impulses.

The Arhada themselves were great exporters of finished products. Indigo dyes, pottery, hemp-cattail blend textiles and pecan oil, used both in cuisine and cosmetics, were ubiquitous items throughout Arhada territories; preserved fruits were common southern commodities; brass products from the zinc-abundant copper ores along the Green River, were Kamābarha's most valuable export. It's interesting, however, to analyse what was imported into their territories during this period, so that we can better track the changes in material culture throughout the early formative. Contact with the nearby Kemithātsan is evident in the spread of glazes in Middle Pottery school sites. Even in Souther Pottery sites we can begin to observe more Middle style artefacts, and we have evidence of kilns being built – many scholars believe these kilns were actually built by Kemithātsan artisans who relocated in the south. From the Kemithātsan they also obtained picked goods and wines, whose production was more specialised. Maple – a prised product in the south – was also obtained through northern trade routes.

Southern trade relationships were more tenuous at that time – Arhada groups migrated into Zonowōdjon lands around 500 AD, and while intermingling did occur at an early stage, we have evidence of a rather fraught relationship, with several Arhadan led attacks into the southern regions, certainly with the aim of clearing coastal land for more intensive agricultural production. Sanaboborôn, another formative site which would develop in the later quarter of the 1st millenium AD, emerged in the wake of these attacks, following different dynamics when compared the other early Arhada cities. This development, which lies outside the themes of this research, is brilliantly explored in another seminal work by Dr Lagor Daham, published in the collection of essays "Dawn of War: Martial history in formative Horea". While tensions and distrust with neighbouring Tritonean peoples slowed trade between the eastern and western southern lakes, polities such as Amadahai and Sanaboborôn found fertile ground with trade further down the continent. Crossing the Gorgonean-Tritonean mountain range they would encounter the Aluwa people – corals were an especially prised trade item, but spices such as peppers and citrus peel were also brought north, where they would enter the diets of elite Arhadans.

One last bad drawing for today. I saw this map and I was truly impressed with how developed trade networks were at that time, especially for people who did not have horses or chariots. I'm afraid I'll have to read through second half of the book tomorrow, the library's closing now – end of note.