"This diversity within a singlecolony is very clear when we look at the textsfrom karum Kanesh/Kültepe. We know that theinhabitants of the karum were not just Assyrians,but local people of Kanesh, and merchants fromother polities such as Ebla."
"The acculturation model does not apply in thecase of the Old Assyrian trading colonies andtheir interaction with their Anatolian host poli-ties in the early second millennium BC. The Anatolian city-states of this period seem to havebeen highly selective in their appropriation of Assyrian ideologies, material culture, and orga-nizational forms. If anything, the cultural influ-ences would seem to have gone the other way,so that the homes of the Assyrian merchants were filled with items and styles of Anatolianmaterial culture. This is highly significant,because it reflects, at least in part, the lack of Assyrian political or economic dominance overthe communities in which they resided."
"The Old Assyrian colonies conform exactly to Abner Cohen’s definition of trade diasporas asspatially dispersed specialized merchant groups who are culturally distinct, organizationally cohesive, and socially independent from theirhost communities while maintaining a high levelof economic and social ties with related com-munities who share the same social identity (A.COHEN 1971, 266-7). Of the three main typesof possible relationships with the local hostcommunities, the Assyrian traders seem to mostclosely match the idea of diaspora autonomy. Inc lose parallel to the Chinese traders of southeast Asia, the Assyrians were able to negotiate economic privileges and explicit recognition of their autonomous political status because they were so financially useful to the rulers of the local Anatolian city states in which they had settled."
