I love Bronze Age Near East, but all I ever hear about is the city states (Ur, Uruk, Lagash, etc). As far as I'm aware, these city states contained some administrative/religious center and were supported by surrounding farmland. The walled city offered citizens (including those outlying farmers) protection when needed, but for the most part, most people probably lived and worked outside the walls.
My question is about people living far from those bright spots we hear so much about. I assume there were small villages of the type we know from the iron age, where small communities lived and farmed and built homesteads. Is this accurate? What do we know of village life in this (broad) period?
In specifically Mesopotamia, many people had to build on the marshes. Often they built their own farmland on the marshes with storehouses on the mainland. Grass mats would be woven, and stomped into the marsh, and this process would be repeated until you had built a piece of land, on which to build a house and some farm land. Village life was hard, because your famland could get washed away very easily. Along with this, oil in the marshes made everything much more unpleasant. There was very limited wood, so much of the building was done with grass mats. If you would like more information on this, check out te film Grass. It shows one of the last migrations of the marsh arabs. Much of the way the people lived when Grass was made closely resembles how life in the ANE looked in Sumeria. It is a more nomadic focus, however. The marsh arabs are probably one of your best bets. I've enclosed a picture below:
https://iraqupdate.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/27-y99dutgb00madan-village.jpg the marsh arabs have been living in much the same way since.
Check out Nomads, the Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East. Great summary of a conference on life in the context of the Late Bronze Age Near East.
