The Archaeology of Early Cities: “What Is the City but the People?”

The archaeology of early urbanism is a growing and dynamic field of research, which has benefited in recent years from numerous advances at both a theoretical and a methodological level. Scholars are increasingly acknowledging that premodern urbanization was a much more diverse phenomenon than tradi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of anthropology 2024-10, Vol.53 (1), p.231-247
Main Authors: Fernández-Götz, Manuel, Smith, Michael E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archaeology
Cities
comparative approaches
methodological revolution
premodern cities
settlement persistence
Subtitles & subtitling
urban heterogeneity
Urbanism
Urbanization
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Summary:The archaeology of early urbanism is a growing and dynamic field of research, which has benefited in recent years from numerous advances at both a theoretical and a methodological level. Scholars are increasingly acknowledging that premodern urbanization was a much more diverse phenomenon than traditionally thought, with alternative forms of urbanism now identified in numerous parts of the world. In this article, we review recent developments, focusing on the following main themes: ( a ) what cities are (including questions of definitions); ( b ) what cities do (with an emphasis on the concentration of people, institutions, and activities in space); ( c ) methodological advances (from LiDAR to bioarchaeology); ( d ) the rise and fall of cities (through a focus on persistence); and ( e ) challenges and opportunities for urban archaeology moving forward. Our approach places people—with their activities and networks—at the center of analysis, as epitomized by the quotation from Shakespeare used as the subtitle of our article.
ISSN:0084-6570
1545-4290
DOI:10.1146/annurev-anthro-041222-094823