Obligations de travail dans les économies palatiales du Bronze récent

Palatial economic archives from various regions — from the Aegean world to Mesopotamia — and from various periods of the Bronze Age, attest to the use by palatial administrations of procedures in which workers were obliged to perform a task, whether craft or agricultural, on behalf of the palace. This article examines the possibility that such a procedure existed also in Ugarit, since a group of administrative texts relating to metals appear comparable to these systems of work-assignments. The material from Ugarit and the conclusions reached allow, then, a comparison with the system of work-assignment attested in the Mycenaean texts and called ta-ra-si-ja. Mycenaean and Ugaritic documentations present typological, structural and chronological analogies, which add to the interest of the comparison.
Cet article est le produit du projet « Bureaucracy and Administrative Procedures in the Syrian Kingdom of Ugarit (14th to 12th centuries B.C.) » (FFI2015–67357–P) (MINECO/FEDER, UE), financé par le Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad au sein du Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación (I+D+I) [J.-P.Vita], ainsi que du projet collectif « Palais de l’âge du Bronze en Egée et en Orient » de l’UMR 7041 du CNRS [Fr. Rougemont].