Ancient Urbanism

The archaeology of pre-Columbian polities in the Amazon River basin forces a reconsideration of early urbanism and long-term change in tropical forest landscapes. We describe settlement and land-use patterns of complex societies on the eve of European contact (after 1492) in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon. These societies were organized in articulated clusters, representing small independent polities, within a regional peer polity. These patterns constitute a “galactic” form of prehistoric urbanism, sharing features with small-scale urban polities in other areas. Understanding long-term change in coupled human-environment systems relating to these societies has implications for conservation and sustainable development, notably to control ecological degradation and maintain regional biodiversity.

How can the built environment help in the understanding of social and economic changes involving ancient local communities? Arab Settlements aims to shed light on the degree to which economic and political changes affected social and identity patterns in the regional context from the Nabatean through to the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. Settlement analysis is understood to be a crucial tool for accessing the local material culture and characterising the specific identities of the concerned societies. For this purpose, the author compares eight case studies across the Middle East, considering their spatial organisation over a long period (2nd – 9th centuries AD). For the interpretation of the remains, the anthropological concepts of ‘segmented societies’ and ‘pastoralism’ are fundamental, providing possible explanations of some spatial patterns attested in the case-studies. The idea of ‘Oriental’ settlements underscores the marked continuity in the organisation of the buildings and the use of space revealed on different levels between the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods. Furthermore, the label of ‘Arab settlements’ is proposed in this context, highlighting the direct connection between social identities and built environment, with a direct reference to the development of an ‘Arab’ identity.

In occasione dei lavori di ristrutturazione dello stabile di proprietà del Comune di Todi situato sul lato settentrionale di Piazza di Marte, destinato ad accogliere gli uffici dei settori Tecnico ed Urbanistica, la rimozione delle pavimentazioni del piano terreno mise in luce un’interessante stratigrafia archeologica. Comune e Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Umbria decisero di comune accordo di ampliare in alcuni ambienti l’estensione e la profondità degli scavi per indagare le strutture archeologiche che stavano emergendo. Le indagini sono state realizzate dallo scrivente nei mesi di gennaio - ottobre 2011, per incarico dell’ente proprietario (responsabile del Procedimento Geom. Pierluigi Mariani, direttore dei lavori Ing. Fabrizio Gentili) e sotto la direzione scientifica della Dott.ssa Dorica Manconi della Soprintendenza. Una seconda tranche delle indagini, che avrebbe dovuto svolgersi sotto la direzione del Dott. Giovanni Altamore, è stata più volte differita.

This study analyzes the area outside the city walls of the Western Han and Tang imperial capitals of Chang'an. Although there has been considerable historical and archaeological research on the urbanized area within the walls of these two cities, the surrounding areas have not previously been systematically investigated. Through the use of detailed survey maps at a scale of 1:10,000 from the early twentieth century, coordinated with archaeologically documented remains and reconstructed plans of the cities themselves, a Geographical Information System (GIS) has been developed. This GIS graphically indicates the remains of a grid of roadways outside the city walls,

The grid model was used to plan cities world-wide in the nineteenth century. By redeveloping and expanding on rectilinear schemes, these cities were brought into line with the image of a rational, productive and modern industrial age, a process which often involved demolishing more organic features of the urban fabric: its winding roads, walls, and monuments, or at least those which were deemed a threat to order and cleanliness. In this paper I examine how the study of ancient cities, and the Roman colonial city in particular, shaped the course of urban planning in Barcelona by analysing the Teoría de la Urbanización (1867), written by Ildefonso Cerdà, the Catalan engineer responsible for the Barcelona grid extension. The history contained therein shows us the importance of Greco-Roman urbanism to modernist planning in a context which is understudied, and diversifies our understanding of the values which grid planning represented in the nineteenth century. I discuss contemporary impressions of Rome, and argue that we should no longer assume that Cerdà and Spanish planners ‘inherited grid planning from the Romans’. By the end of this chapter, it will be obvious that Cerdà did not intend Barcelona, a city with a Roman past, to embody ‘Roman’ values at all.

The excavations undertaken in Conimbriga since 1939 and recent studies have exposed, completely or in
substantial extensions, the remains of more than twenty residential buildings of the roman town, evolved from
the pre-roman settlement, of which the essential of its non-roman plan survived. Conimbriga is, hence, a prime
site to understand how various types of domestic buildings play a specific role in an urban fabric, and how
these types represent (or not) specific moments in time, in the evolution of a town which appears to be an
atypical example in the province and in the western Empire as a whole.

The choice of the site for the foundation of the city of Peltuinum in the Vestine region is due to an aquifer outcropping on a plateau, which lay beside a pre-roman sheep track.  The paper stresses the important role of the sheep track throughout the centuries. After new data based on many researches, it is to be considered the different way of settling by Romans and non Romans in the Appennine region.
New data on the late Roman city.

The ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan had the most aberrant design of any city in ancient
Mesoamerica. I examine similarities and differences between the design of Teotihuacan and other
Mesoamerican cities. During the Preclassic period, a set of common Mesoamerican planning principles
emerged. The designers of Teotihuacan rejected most of these principles in favor of a new and radical set
of planning concepts. After the fall of Teotihuacan, subsequent urban planners ignored the Teotihuacan
principles and returned to ancient Mesoamerican planning ideas. Elements of the Teotihuacan plan did
not resurface until the Mexica of Tenochtitlan revived them for a specific goal. The historical sequence
of central Mexican city layouts highlights the anomalous character of Teotihuacan’s principles of urban
design within the canons of ancient Mesoamerican urbanism.

I describe a new approach to understanding processes of village aggregation and urbanization in the past. The key concept—energized crowding—refers to the social effects of large numbers of social interactions that take place within settlements. Demographic processes of population growth and settlement nucleation (aggregation and urbanization) lead to increased energized crowding, which in turn generates a variety of social outcomes. I discuss those outcomes under three headings: scalar stress, community formation, and economic growth. In this model, aggregation and urbanization are crucial processes that lead—by way of energized crowding—to many documented social outputs in both contemporary and past settlement systems. Because this is a new approach for archaeology, conceptual tools for understanding these processes must be borrowed from other social sciences. In particular, recent research on settlement scaling provides empirical and theoretical support for the notion that aggregation and urbanization were of fundamental importance in generating social change in the past. Population aggregation—the concentration of formerly dispersed people into villages, towns, and cities—is one of the most consequential processes in the history of human society. When people come together in a settlement, the number and level of interactions among individuals increases exponentially, and these interactions have generative power. That is, they bring about a variety of social changes, both positive and negative. Research by sociologists and anthropologists has tended to focus on the negative consequences of urbanization—increased levels of stress, crime, poverty, and alienation. Research by economists and geographers, on the other hand, emphasize the positive consequences of aggregation. The acceleration of face-to-face social interaction in larger and denser settlements stimulates knowledge transfer, technological innovation, and economic growth. One well-documented finding for contemporary cities is that as cities grow larger, their per-capital productivity increases; individuals are more productive in larger cities (Bettencourt 2013; Pumain 2012). These positive and negative consequences of aggregation and urbanization are two sides of the same coin. Whether talking about the aggregation of small early farming groups into villages or the processes of rural-to-urban migration that lead to urbanization in the developing world today, the results are similar. Increased numbers of people living in close contact activates a process that architectural historian Spiro Kostof (1991:37) called energized crowding: " Cities are places where a certain energized crowding of people takes place. This has nothing to do with absolute size or with absolute numbers; it has to do with settlement density. " While research suggests that the magnitude of the social effects of energized crowding does in fact depend on

Este ensayo fue publicado en la Revista de la Universidad de México, Nueva Época 22(2005):74–85. En él se presentan una serie de principios de ordenamiento urbano que pueden rastrearse en diversos sitios de Mesoamérica, como la relación con el contexto geográfico, especialmente las montañas prominentes, o la representación simbólica del modelo metafísico del tiempo y el espacio.

One of the most frequently cited examples for ancient Egyptian urbanism, the town of Lahun 1 is located close to the southeast entrance of the Fayum lake depression. It has been the object of a long line of studies focusing primarily on the analysis of the architectural layout of the houses within this town. The strict grid pattern and the noticeable complexity of the internal organization of the larger houses have led to its being of significant interest for the understanding of the social organization and urban characteristics of its inhabitants. The primary function of this town has usually been linked to the funerary cult of Senwosret II — whose nearby pyramid complex has been understood as the main reason for its existence — housing administrators, as well as temple staff for the upkeep of his royal mortuary cult. More recently, the use of satellite images in conjunction with available archaeological and textual data has led to several new observations and results for this important Middle Kingdom settlement site, which not only question the function of this settlement but also provide a new perspective on its setting within the wider landscape of the Fayum region.

I discuss two key issues for the analysis of early urban settlements: definitions, and comparative analysis. There is no 'best' definition of terms like city or urban. These are not empirical descriptions of the archaeological record; they are theoretical terms whose definition should match the research goals and questions of a study. Most archaeological definitions of city and urban use combinations of six dimensions of variability: size, functions, urban life/society, form, meaning, and growth. I then review seven reasons for archaeologists to pursue comparative analysis of past cities. Comparative analysis is necessary if we are to move beyond descriptions of individual cities to build an explanatory science of urbanism in the past.

This books takes a comprehensive look at the Roman army as a factor which prompted substantial changes and economic transformations in the province of Lower Moesia, discussing its impact on the development of particular branches of the economy. The volume comprises five chapters. Chapter One, entitled “Before Lower Moesia: A Political and Economic Outline” constitutes an introduction which presents the economic circumstances in the region prior to Roman conquest. In Chapter Two, entitled “Garrison of the Lower Moesia and the Scale of Militarization”, the author estimates the size of the garrison in the province and analyzes the influence that the military presence had on the demography of Lower Moesia. The following chapter – “Monetization” – is concerned with the financial standing of the Roman soldiery and their contribution to the monetization of the province. Chapter Four, “Construction”, addresses construction undertakings on which the army embarked and the outcomes it produced, such as urbanization of the province, sustained security and order (as envisaged by the Romans), expansion of the economic market and exploitation of the province’s natural resources. In the final chapter, entitled “Military Logistics and the Local Market”, the narrative focuses on selected aspects of agriculture, crafts and, to a slightly lesser extent, on trade and services. The book demonstrates how the Roman army, seeking to meet its provisioning needs, participated in and contributed to the functioning of these industries.

Sloppy argumentation occurs throughout The Dawn of Everything, making this a highly frustrating book whose interpretations are poorly supported and sometimes in error. I focus on the treatment of early cities and urbanism in the book. While the treatment of the Ukrainian Trypillian sites, Teotihuacan, and other early settlements is adequate, the authors' claims for originality are overblown. Their failure to follow basic scholarly mechanics of documentation and argumentation (e.g., inappropriate use of argument by analogy; failure to cite relevant work; empty citations; and phrasing widely accepted conclusions as if they were radical new ideas) gets in the way of potential contributions to the study of early urbanism.