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Cities are so common today that we cannot imagine a world without them. More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and that proportion is growing. Yet for most of our history, there were no cities. Why, how, and when did urban life begin? Ancient cities have much to tell us about the social, political, religious, and economic conditions of their times—and also about our own. Ongoing excavations all over the world are enabling scholars to document intra-city changes through time, city-to-city interaction, and changing relations between cities and their hinterlands. The essays in this volume—presented at a Sackler colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences—reveal that archaeologists now know much more about the founding and functions of ancient cities, their diverse trade networks, their heterogeneous plans and layouts, and their various lifespans and trajectories.
List of contents
Introduction
Joyce Marcus and Jeremy A. Sabloff
The City through Time and Space: Transformations of Centrality
Colin Renfrew
Early Cities: Craft Workers, Kings, and Controlling the Supernatural
Bruce G. Trigger
Analyzing Cities
Mogens Herman Hansen
Other Perspectives on Urbanism: Beyond the Disciplinary Boundaries
Karl W. Butzer
Between Concept and Reality: Case Studies in the Development of Roman Cities in the Mediterranean
Janet DeLaine
Urban Foundation, Planning, and Sustainability in the Roman Northwestern Provinces
Michael J. Jones
A Tale of Two Cities: Lowland Mesopotamia and Highland Anatolia
Elizabeth C. Stone
Royal Cities and Cult Centers, Administrative Towns, and Workmen’s Settlements in Ancient Egypt
Kathryn A. Bard
Indus Urbanism: New Perspectives on Its Origin and Character
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer
Stages in the Development of “Cities” in Pre-Imperial China
Lothar von Falkenhausen
Early African Cities: Their Role in the Shaping of Urban and Rural Interaction Spheres
Chapurukha M. Kusimba
Pomp and Circumstance before Belize: Ancient Maya Commerce and the New River Conurbation
K. Anne Pyburn
Incidental Urbanism: The Structure of the Prehispanic City in Central Mexico
Kenneth G. Hirth
Links in the Chain of Inka Cities: Communication, Alliance, and the Cultural Production of Status, Value, and Power
Craig Morris
Cities and Urbanism: Central Themes and Future Directions
Joyce Marcus and Jeremy A. Sabloff
About the author
Joyce Marcus
Summary
Why, how, and when did urban life begin? Ancient cities have much to tell us about the social, political, religious, and economic conditions of their times--and also about our own.
