Urbanized Landscapes in Early Syro-Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mesoamerica (original) (raw)

Entropic Cities The Paradox of Urbanism in Ancient Mesopotamia

CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY, 2018

The growth of cities in antiquity is paradoxical: before modern health and sanitation standards, early urban dwellers suffered high mortality as a result of epidemics and chronic diseases arising, respectively, from propinquity and poor sanitation. At the same time, lower-status individuals within those cities would have endured depressed birth rates because, typically, many toiled in partially or fully dependent occupations not conducive to early marriage or stable families. The interplay between these compounding forces implies that early cities would not have been viable over the long term and could not have grown without a continual flow of immigrants. The early cities of Mesopotamia were no exception. In an earlier publication, I argued that the growth of the first centers that emerged in the alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers during the fourth millennium BC was predicated on migratory inflows that took place, in part, in the context of self-amplifying cycles whereby the replacement of imported commodities with locally made, mass-produced substitutes catalyzed increases in specialization, employment, market size, and trade (Smithian Growth). In this article, I expand on these ideas, explore their applicability to later periods of Mesopotamian history, and consider further iterations of substitution-fueled growth cycles in those periods.

Making Ancient Cities: Space and Place in Early Urban Societies

2014

Contents: Chapter 1 Making Ancient Cities: New Perspectives on the Production of Urban Places Kevin D. Fisher (Department of Classical, Near Eastern & Religious Studies, University of British Columbia) Andrew T. Creekmore III (Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado) Chapter 2 The social production of space in third millennium cities of Upper Mesopotamia Andy Creekmore (Department of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado) Chapter 3 North Mesopotamian Urban Space at Titriş Höyük in the Third Millennium B.C. Yoko Nishimura (Department of Anthropology, U. of Pennsylvania) Chapter 4 Swahili urban spaces of the East African coast Stephanie Wynne-Jones (Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol Jeffrey Fleisher (Dept. of Anthropology, Rice University) Chapter 5 Urban Identities: Social and Spatial Production at Classic Period Chunchucmil, Yucatán, Mexico Aline Magnoni (Tulane University) Traci Arden (University of Miami) Scott Hutson (University of Kentucky) Bruce Dahlin (Ancient Maya Environmental Studies Center) Chapter 6 Making the first cities on Cyprus: urbanism and social change in the Late Bronze Age Kevin D. Fisher (Classical, Near Eastern & Religious Studies, U. of British Columbia) Chapter 7 Urbanization and the emergence of the Greek Polis: The case of Azoria, Crete Rodney Fitzsimons (Dept. of Ancient History and Classics, Trent University) Chapter 8 The rise of a Neopalatial city and the (re)construction of its hinterlands: A view from Galatas D. Matthew Buell (Dept. of Classics, SUNY Buffalo) Chapter 9 Cahokia: The Processes and Principles of Creation of an Early Mississippian City John Kelly (Dept. of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis) James A. Brown (Dept. of Anthropology, Northwestern University) Chapter 10 Comparing East and West: Aspects of urban manufacture and retail in the capitals of the Roman and Han Empires Anna Razeto (University of Copenhagen) Chapter 11 Ancient Open Space, Gardens, and Parks: A Comparative Discussion for Mesoamerican Urbanism Barbara L. Stark (School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University) Chapter 12 Different Cities Norman Yoffee (Departments of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of New Mexico and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University)

5 Maintaining Social Bonds during the Preclassic: An Incipient Urban Landscape

In this paper I utilize the perspective of political ecology to guide the study of incipient urbanization in the Preclassic site of Noh K'uh in Chiapas, Mexico. In my analysis of landscape formation and local settlement patterns, I demonstrate how the relationship between people and the environment was particularly intimate within the valley that is home to Noh K'uh. In this case, orientation, architecture, and natural landmarks demonstrate the physical manifestation of political, social, and ritual organization in this Late Preclassic community. By emphasizing the political ecology perspective, I am able to outline how ritual and politics used features of a sacred world to create and organize an incipient urban community in the New World. [Preclassic, Landscape, Maya, Community, Urbanism] P olitical ecology examines the long-term consequences of human alterations to the environment, with a focus on the political, social, and economic ramifications of human action. While many modern studies in political ecology focus on global issues of inequality (Bryant and Bailey 1997), archaeological perspectives offer a unique opportunity to study the long-term transformations of the political , economic, and cultural processes that guide environmental transformations. In many cases the archaeological record indicates how small and seemingly inconsequential actions can lead to pronounced social inequalities over time. For example, Pauketat (2000) and Bolender and Catlin (Chapter 7, this volume) demonstrated how imbalance and inequality proliferated over time when early settlers decided to stake claims to key resources and advantageous locations. This model provides insight into the growth processes observed in highly stratified societies, but the diversity of spatial and temporal contexts in the ancient past requires additional and alternative models.