Dedication: To Robert McCormick Adams / Henry T. Wright -- 1. The Local and the Regional: An Introduction / Mitchell S. Rothman -- 2. The Prehistory of Imperialism: The Case of Uruk Period Mesopotamia / Guillermo Algaze -- 3. Calibrated Radiocarbon Age Determinations of Uruk-Related Assemblages / Henry T. Wright and E. S. A. Rupley -- 4. Cultural Action in the Uruk World / Henry T. Wright -- 5. Cultural and Political Networks in the Ancient Near East during the Fourth and Third Millennia B.C. / Hans J. Nissen -- 6. The Uruk Period in Southern Mesopotamia / Susan Pollock -- 7. Syria and the Uruk Expansion / Glenn M. Schwartz -- 8. Indigenous Social Complexity at Hacinebi (Turkey) and the Organization of Uruk Colonial Contact / Gil J. Stein -- 9. Centralization Processes in Greater Mesopotamia: Uruk "Expansion" as the Climax of Systemic Interactions among Areas of the Greater Mesopotamian Region / Marcella Frangipane -- 10. The Tigris Piedmont, Eastern Jazira, and Highland Western Iran in the Fourth Millennium B.C. / Mitchell S. Rothman -- 11. Mesopotamian Intraregional Relations Reflected through Glyptic Evidence in the Late Chalcolithic 1-5 Periods / Holly Pittman -- 12. A View of the Plains from the Mountains: Comments on Uruk by an Andeanist / Terence N. D'Altroy