Cities in the modern world (original) (raw)
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Urban Archaeology: A New Agenda - Editorial
Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2020
Urban societies worldwide have created a remarkable archaeological record. Many pivotal questions concerning the global organization and long-term development of societies, and the parameters of their strategies and relations to the surrounding world, revolve around the urban condition for which the archaeological record is a vital source. The empirical material relating to urban societies is extremely diverse, and it is often difficult to draw comparisons across regions, scales, patterns, and functions. But diversity and cross-comparison are both essential to the study of urban life. Today, most of the world's population lives in cities. The issues of urbanism have increasing topicality, and the study of cities across time and space has seen an immense increase in popularity over the past decades. It is for these reasons that the decision was made to launch the Journal of Urban Archaeology.
"Definitions and Comparisons in Urban Archaeology" (2020)
Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2020
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.
Archaeological research on early cities has a long tradition, and works such as V.G Childe's seminal paper on the "Urban Revolution" have shaped scholarly debates for decades. While we have now developed much more nuanced understandings on the roles and characteristics of early urban sites, the questions of when, how, and why people came together to form early cities and towns remain a key topic within archaeological agendas. Childe envisaged his concept of the urban as part of a liberating vision of human history. Yet some critics today target it as a construct of Eurocentric theory, or the epitome of a constraining, evolutionary theory, perpetuating the agency of coercive states. In this session, we want to bring together innovative approaches to the archaeology of early urbanism, from the first cities of the ancient Near East or the Indus Valley, to Iron Age oppida, Roman cities, and medieval towns. We also welcome cases that highlight debates on the meaning or boundaries of the concept of urbanity. In particular, we welcome papers that incorporate novel theoretical and methodological perspectives (e.g. urban network analysis, low-density urbanism, urban scaling theory), with cutting-edge fieldwork strategies including various forms of remote sensing, geoarchaeology, and high-resolution stratigraphic excavations. Additionally, we welcome contributions that illustrate how research on ancient cities can help to address urban challenges in the present.
Historical Archaeology and the Recent Urban Past
This paper examines the ways in which international historical archaeologists have explored the recent past, in an effort to inform and contribute to contemporary debates about social identity and social inclusion. It is argued that the archaeology of the mundane and everyday can contribute to contemporary culture by creating a sense of community and developing social cohesion. Emphasis is placed upon the archaeology of the recent urban past and case studies are presented from New York, Sydney and Cape Town. The paper concludes that the study of the materiality of urban social life offers a powerful research tool for social scientists, and that archaeologists and heritage interpreters should make greater use of this form of evidence within the context of early 21st-century urban regeneration schemes in the UK.
FERNÁNDEZ-GÖTZ, M. and Smith, M.E. (2024): The Archaeology of Early Cities: “What is the City but the People?”. Annual Review of Anthropology 53: 231-247.
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.
Exploring the Archaeology of the Modern City: Issues of Scale, Integration and Complexity
International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2005
Historical archaeologists have advocated the need to explore the archaeology of the modern city using several different scales or frames of reference—the household and the district being the most common. In this paper, we discuss the value of comparisons at larger scales, for example between cities or countries, as a basis for understanding archaeology of the modern western city. We argue that patterns of similarity and dissimilarity detected at these larger scales can (and should) become part of our interpretive and explanatory armoury, when it comes to understanding patterns and processes at smaller scales. However, we also believe that these larger scale enquiries do not by any means exhaust (or diminish the importance of) the site- or household-specific questions that continue to demand adequate answers. By reporting some of the thinking behind the work that has been done in Melbourne, Sydney and shortly to begin in London, we seek to more clearly establish the value of this broader comparative agenda in urban historical archaeology.
Urban Archaeology: A Selected Bibliography
North American Archaeologist, 1983
In compiling this bibliography, we have consciously, if somewhat unsystematiccally, limited our universe to works dealing with archaeology in large com munities, omitting references to work in smaller towns and villages. We have also set our southern geographical boundary at the Rio Grande, including only examples from the United States and Canada. Finally, we have decided to omit references to manuscripts, papers delivered at meetings, and short progress reports appearing in the "current research" sections of publications such as Historical Archaeology and the Newsletter of the Society for Historical Archae ology, though we know that information about some important work is avail able only in these forms. We have, however, included citations of reports pre pared for clients or government agencies, when we believe that these can be obtained by researchers with reasonable effort. Even with these constraints, the final list is too long, and the allotted space too short, to permit adequate annotation. Instead, we have endeavored to facil itate use of the bibliography by preparing a subject index, in which works which contain particularly full or otherwise useful references to the chosen subjects can be identified by the numbers which precede the authors' names in the alphabetically arranged master list of publications.
The Devil is in the detail: Strategy, methods and theory in urban archaeology
Conflicting regional traditions in the practice of archaeological methodology may denude the value of archaeological enquiry as part of the development process if intra-national research agendas cannot be formulated, likewise intra-national research frameworks cannot be formulated without their being a degree of commonality in the practice of archaeo0ogy within Europe. The case study of excavations in Beirut in the 1990s' is used to draw some of these issues out.