Mesopotamia is well known as the location of what is often touted as the first city in the world - Uruk - that emerged in the mid-fourth millennium BC as part of a process of urbanization that saw the subsequent spread of city-states across the arId but irrigated zone in and around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq (Algaze 2008; Nissen 1988; Pollock 1999). Less well known is that cities also developed in Upper Mesopotamia around the same time as Uruk, in areas mostly devoted to dry farming. This process is brought to light by recent excavations at the sites of Tell Brak and Tell Hamoukar (Emberling and McDonald 2003; Gibson et al. 2002; Oates et al. 2007; Ur 2010; Ur et al. 2007). These early cities do not seem to have had many contemporary peers in the region, although urbanism was widespread by the third millennium (Akkermans
And Schwartz 2003). Much debate centers on whether the cities of Upper Mesopotamia were independent, indigenous formations, or if their development was heavily influenced by the cities of Lower Mesopotamia (Algaze 2008). Regardless of one's position on this debate, the emergence of cities in Upper Mesopotamia was a critical juncture in the prehistory of the region.
MAKING ANCIENT CITIES
The structure of Upper Mesopotamian cities has much in common with the cities of Lower Mesopotamia, but there are also significant differences, discussed in this volume by Andrew Creekmore (Chapter 2) and Yoko Nishimura (Chapter 3). In each region, large cIties are best characterized as city-states, in which a large urban center hosts a state government that rules a relatively small territory radiating from the capital city. Smaller cities had urban characteristics, but were linked politically and economically to a nuclear center in the region. Both small and large cities generally consisted of densely packed architecture - including residences, palaces, temples, and workshops - protected by fortiication walls, wIth limited extramural settlement.
Creekmore's survey of patterns in the production of space in Upper Mesopotamian cities emphasizes the degree to which household - and neighborhood-level actions structure city space. He investigates several characteristics shared by these cities, including multiple centers of economic, political, and religious power; highly nucleated population; armature systems thaT link key monuments or routes through cities; conservative or enduring use of space; and defensible spaces, such as culs-de-sac that appear "organic" or "emergent," but may instead represent careful planning to meet residents' needs. Although Creekmore argues that general patterns in the production of space in these cities reflect a heterarchical process, he notes sig-niicant differences in the life history of some cities, which indicate that the degree of power-sharing and its role in the production of city space varied.
Nishimura identiies a similar interplay of bottom-up and top-down actions in the production of city space in her detailed case study of neighborhoods in the Upper Mesopotamian city oF Titri§. Nishimura considers multiple levels of spatial production, including analysis of household activities, architecture, neighborhoods, street patterns, and special-use buildings. Her study ranges from a microscale, room-by-room and house-by-house analysis of patterns of artifact distribution at Titris to a consideration of entire
Neighborhoods and their place within the city's structure. She finds that two widely separated neighborhoods in the city demonstrate high-density housing, homogeneous lifeways, a high standard of living, and standardized house plans that emphasize privacy. In concert with Creekmore's discussion of multiple nuclei of power in Upper Mesopotamian cities, Nishimura finds that public buildings are distributed throughout Titris - often built at strategic locations including city gates, elevated spaces, and next to the mound that presumaBly functioned as a citadel.
The focus on Mesopotamia as progenitor of urban society in this general region and the long shadow cast by the famous cities of the Greek mainland and Ionia from the Classical and Hellenistic periods (ca. 480-30 BC) has meant that the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean has rarely been seen as important in the study of urban origins and development (cf. Branigan 2001). For the Bronze Age Aegean, the preoccupation with palaces - that first appear in the late third through early second millennium BC - in both excavations and discussions of sociopolitical change, has meant that the urban environments wIthin which most of these monumental buildings were situated have received scant attention. The situation is exacerbated by published reconstructions of palaces such as Knossos that show them sitting in splendid isolation in park-like settings (e. g., Klynne 1998). Matt Buell's discussion (Chapter 8 In this volume) on the important and only recently discovereD Minoan site of Galatas counters such a view by situating its palace within an urban-built environment designed to promote both sociopolitical differentiation and community cohesion.
The development of palatial centers on Crete markeD the earliest emergence of state-level societies in the Aegean region (see Manning 2008 for one account of this process). By the Neopalatial period (ca. 1750-1460 BC), Knossos had risen to prominence, and may have exercised hegemony over some or all of the island's other polities at this time (Knappett and Schoep 2000). Buell suggests the possibility that Knossos's expansion might explain the planning and development of a new palatial urban center aT Galatas. Buell applies Michael Smith's (2007) criteria for analyzing planning in ancient cities, combined with Rapoport's levels of meaning (1988, 1990), and finds a high
Degree of planning at Galatas. This, combined with a reordering of local settlement patterns at the time of Galatas's development, demonstrates the emergence of an urban center that reoriented local systems oF food and craft production.
MAKING ANCIENT CITIES
Cyprus - in the midst oF its more famous Aegean neighbors and the long-lived urban traditions of Anatolia, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, anD Egypt - has been similarly overlooked in discussions of ancient cities (cf. Gates 2003:154-158). Yet Kevin Fisher's study of the island's first cities, which emerge during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1700-1100 BC), demonstrates their vital and active role in the profound social transformations of this period. Through the production of space at various scales and the structuring of new patterns of social interaction, the new cityscapes were a driving force in the rapid sociopolitical change that saw the island shift from a relatively egalitarian, village-based society to one with hierarchical anD heterarchical social structures. Fisher details city-scale - that is, centralized planning evidenced by gridded streets and spatially coordinated monumental buildings - but also reveals how neighborhoods and households modified city space and, in some cases, undermined the spatial control of the central authorities. These cities do not adhere rigidly to a single, ideal urban form, but each was constructed within the context of local history and decision making. The novel forms of monumental, domestic, and mortuary architecture in these urban environments provided various contexts for social action and interaction through which new statuses, roles, and identities were negotiated, established, and displayed.
Following the collapse oF the Bronze Age palatial system ca. 1200 BC, the so-called Dark Age marked the beginning of various social, political, ideological, and economic developments that culminated in the emergence of the Greek city-state, or polis, in the ninth and eighth centuries BC (Osborne 1996; Thomas and Conant 2003). This process is still poorly understood and much of the archaeological evidence for the formative stages of many cities has been obscured, and often destroyed, by constructions of the Classical and later periods. Rodney Fitzsimons's chapter on the results of recent excavations at Azoria (Chapter 7 in this volume), on the island of Crete, offers us a rare glimpse of a polis in the making and the recursive relationship between the urban environment and the development of new sociopolitical institutions. Fitzsimons's study identifies an interplay between household-level spatial production and mid - or high-level,
Civic spatial production, implicating it in the far-reaching sociopolitical changes that characterized this period. In the building of houses, retaining walls, and public buildings - and the hosting of festivities in houses and communal structures - residents and rulers express spatially an ongoing negotiation of evolving social roles and institutions in a new kind of society. Fitzsimons argues that urban space in Azoria was designed at both the household and the civic levels to negotiate newly emerging social relationships in which civic identity competed with kinship to mark social allegiance and meaning. In the process of building a city, the residents of Azoria intentionally deviated from the spatial principles of past settlement at the site, a decision Fitzsimons argues was motivated by the need to supersede past sociopolitical relationships while building a new civic identity. In this way, the production of urban space was central to the emergence oF the polis as the socio-spatial and political institution that came to define the reemergence of the state in the Late Geometric througH Classical Greek world.
Ancient African cities receive less attention in the general literature than cities in other world regions, in part because of the legacy of racism and the view that Africa's climate and culture impeded urbanization. This lack of attention creates the perception that, outside of Egypt, cities in Africa are comparatively recent or developed only under the influence of external forces, including traders and colonizing populations (Kusimba 2008; McIntosh and McIntosh 2003). Even Egypt was once considereD to lack cities, owing to issues of preservation and its character as a territorial state in contrast to the city-states of Mesopotamia (Bard 2008). Current concerns in the study of ancient African cities include examining their indigenous roots, relationship to hinterlands, influence of foreign trading partners, and connections between ancient and historical cases. McIntosh and his colleagues argue for the recognition of polities of the Niger River Valley in West Africa, such as Jenne-jeno, as representative of a different and therefore previously unacknowledged form of urbanism in which the dispersed settlement of corporate groups in separate but closely spaced sites within a given region functioned as a "clustered" city that developed 250 BC-AD 1400 in the absence of the state (McIntosh and McIntosh 1993, 2003; McIntosh 1991, 2005).
The dispersed nature of these and other African cities contrasts with highly nucleated, walled cities such as those of the Swahili and Yoruba (Kusimba 2008). SwaHili cities, discussed in Chapter 4 Of this volume by Stephanie Wynne-Jones and Jeff Fleisher, are city-states that formed in AD 800-1300 in eastern Africa, from southern Somalia to Mozambique, in the context of complex trading relationships with Muslim merchants plying the Arabian Sea. Distinctive for their use of coral as an architectural material, these cities are important examples of indigenous African urbanism because they highlight how social structure, daily practice, and economic activities influenced the development of the built environment.
MAKING ANCIENT CITIES
In their analysis of Swahili cities, Wynne-Jones and Fleisher ind that unifying models that emphasize the role of elite agency and high-level meaning in structuring and planning cities, such as that offered by Mark Horton (1994, 1996), cobble together features of different cities over time, presenting a useful - but ultimately inaccurate - picture of urban space that fails to explain the development of many cities. As a result, the diversity of cities is neglected because only a few cases it the prevailing models. Wynne-Jones and Fleisher argue that this problem is best solved by examining low levels of meaning (after Rapoport 1988; 1990) and household activities, which reveal common engines of spatial production in these diverse cities. These authors explore the role of Rapoport's high - and mid-level meanings, for example, in the centrality oF the main mosque, but they argue that household-level spatial production and low-level meanings are the driving forces that structure city space. Their approach, whicH they connect to practice theory, emphasizes the coordination of house construction among neighbors with shared walls, and the maintenance of open space arounD houses, which provides room to expand the house and space for common outdoor activities. These everyday practices generate low-level meanings that are perpetuated through the lifecycle of houses. In this way, sociopolitical processes are enacted within a changing urban landscape that both shapes anD is shaped by urban residents and visitors alike.
Mesoamerican cities are usually divided into highland versus lowland examples, with the former in the hills of southern Mexico, and the latter in the tropics of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize,
El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In both areas, the earliest cities developed in the period between 650 BC-AD 500 (Trigger 2003:97). Highland polities include very large cities with nucleated populations, such as Teotihuacan, TenocHtitlan, and Monte Alban, which were the centers of regional states. In contrast, lowland cities - such as Copan, Palenque, anD Tikal - tend to be smaller city-states, have more dispersed populations, and command smaller territories (Coe 2005). In these areas, there are different types of cities in terms of their economic, political, and ideological roles within subregions (Pyburn 2008:249). Interactions between these polities were complex and changed over time, as indicated by settlement pattern studies and world systems models (Balkansky 2006; Blanton et al. 1992; SmIth and Berdan 2000).
The contrast between highly nucleated cities and cities characterized by a dispersed population centered on a ceremonial core presents challenges for scholars of Mesoamerican cities. In an attempt to make sense of this diversity, Marcus (1983) examined the structure of Mesoamerican cities in light of the models of modern urban planners. Later, Sanders and Webster (1988) applied Fox's (1977) typological approach in order to sort Mesoamerican cities into categories based on the size of the population, degree to which power is centralized, complexity of economic institutions, and importance of ritual functions. This approach was very influential in studies of these cities, but more recently, some scholars have argued for the importance of agency, identity, and meaning in the development and deinition of Mesoamerican cities (Houston et al. 2003; Yaeger 2003). In his review of urbanism in Mesoamerica, Joyce calls for studies of urbanism to "focus on practice, social negotiation, identity, and materiality" in a manner that includes the agency of the entire range of persons in society, including everyday people of every age, occupation, and social status (Joyce 2009: 195). In contrast to Joyce's inclusiveness, to solve the problem of deining Aztec cities, Michael Smith focuses on the actions of poLitical leaders in his study of Aztec city states (2008). Smith argues that the administrative, economic, and religious influences of cities mark them as urban regardless of population size. Like Joyce (2009), Hirth is critical of functional approaches like that of Smith and others, including Blanton (1976) and Marcus (1983). He argues that Central Mexican cities were "incidental" and "secondary" developments that derived from the "segmentary community structure" of the altepetel or "royal household and the land and people
Of the ruler" (Hirth 2008:277-278). Hirth's approach, which shifts the focus from specific urban centers to the rural and urban aspects of social structure at the regional level, incorporates ethnohistoric and archaeological data in an attempt to understand these cities from an emic perspective, rather than imposing formal models based on central-place theory or other products of western scholarship. A recent volume focuses specifically on the role of neighborhoods in Mesoamerican cities (Arnauld et al. 2012), further highlighting the importance of mid-level social structure in defining urban spaces.
MAKING ANCIENT CITIES
In this volume, Aline Magnoni, Traci Ardren, Scott Hutson, and Bruce Dahlin (see Chapter 5) examine Chunchucmil - a Classic Maya city in Yucatan - and Barbara StarK (Chapter 11) focuses on Cerro de las Mesas, a lowland city in Veracruz, Mexico. Both chapters address aspects of the issues outlined earlier, including the contrast between nucleated and dispersed cities, agency in urbanization, political authority, meaning, and urban identity. Magnoni et al. emphasize household and neighborhood patterns as indicative of larger social processes at Chunchucmil. This city differs from its regional peers in terms of its relatively high-density settlement, lack of a single monumental core, and low walls that incorporate copious open space into specific household compounds. In light of the absence of a single ruling or administrative center in the city, and the wide distribution of trade goods among households, the authors argue that power was more widely distributed at ChunchucmIl than at other cities in the region. This power-sharing is manifested in the dearth of evidence for centralized city planning as residents were left to coordinate the construction of household-lot boundary walls and narrow residential streets that characterize much of the city. The authors suggest that the commerce that drew people to settle in an otherwise less-than-ideal part of the landscape provided an opportunity for place-making that generated a unique version of the characteristic dispersed structure of Mesoamerican cities.
Stark's analysis of open spaces in Mesoamerican cIties includes households, residential areas, and elite or institutional complexes, although the latter command more open space and thus are the major focus of her attention. Open spaces generally receive less study than built-up spaces because these "empty" spaces provide less tangible evidence for the activities they hosted, and they may be perceived as the accidental by-product of the production of other urban spaces (see also M. L. SmIth 2008). Stark gives new life to the gardens, parks,
Plazas, and other delimited spaces that are particularly characteristic of Mesoamerican cities and that provide clues to the production of urban space. As Stark argues, leap-frogging the urban fringe belts of open space may be responsible for some of the copious open space in these dispersed or low-density cities, and open space may mark settlement boundaries. Open spaces also hold the key to measuring settlement nucleation in order to compare cities both intra - and interregionally. In her analysis, Stark emphasizes the role played by open space in negotiating social relationships, aesthetics, and symbolism. Elaborate gardens may serve as class markers, marking sociaL distinctions on the landscape.
In spite of a tradition of monumental construction among various Native American groups dating as far back as the mid-fourth millennium BC, there are few, if any, widely accepted examples of pre-Columbian cities in North America. While some scholars have characterized certain Puebloan sites in the Southwest as cities or at least near-urban (e. g., Lekson's [1999] discussion of Chaco Canyon, Aztec, and Paquime [Casas Grandes]), NorTh America is rarely included in studies of ancient cities. A key exception is the well-known Mississippian site of Cahokia, which emerged in the American Bottom outside of what is today St. Louis, reaching its zenith in the twelfth through thirteenth centuries AD. At five times the size of the next-largest such site, Pauketat (1998:45) describes Cahokia as an "archaeological behemoth," emphasizing that its effects on other cultural complexes of the time were "both apparent and, arguably, profound." Debate continues regarding the nature of Cahokia's sociopolitical organization, with divergent opinions as to whether it was some form of chiefdom (e. g., Pauketat 1994; Milner 1998) or rather a state (Gibbon 1974; O'Brien 1989), or whether we should jettison these evolutionary terms all together as Pauketat (2007) has more recently argued; nor is there agreement on the nature and extent of the site's hegemony over the surrounding region (see Holt 2009:232-235 for a recent summary; also Cobb 2003).
As John Kelly and Jim Brown - two scholars long associated with the famous site - discuss in their contribution to this volume (see Chapter 9), the idea of Cahokia as a city has proved equally contentious. They argue that although it does not conform in all aspects
To the litmus tests for urbanism established on the basis of Near Eastern and other "classic" cities, Cahokia was indeed a city in the context of Mississippian culture. Kelly and Brown take a close look at the city's structure, interpreting its form in light of ethnographic and ethnohistoric studies of descendant populations in the region. They explore the complex structure of Cahokia's many plazas and mound groups, and argue that the overall structure of Cahokia was driven by local elites with a view toward mirroring cosmic structure, and corporate groups moving to the site established new monuments within this overall scheme. Some newcomers resisted the control of Cahokian elites by starting competing settlements nearby. As described by Kelly and Brown, in the structure of Cahokia there is a fundamental tension between social integration via corporate, reciprocal relationships, as expressed through positioning within both the imagined cosmos that structures the site and the tangible monuments of the city, and the enforcement of a hierarchical cosmos and society in the form of higher - or lower-ranking monument groups and competition for space. Thus, the plazas and monuments are built by corporate groups, but adhere to an elite-driven scheme that emphasizes the ranking of both the cosmos and the residents of Cahokia, as expressed in the relative size and importance of mound and plaza groups. Although this view of Cahokia de-emphasizes the construction of housing, and low-level meanings emphasized by other chapters, it highlights the complexity of the urban process in a seTtlement not often considered in discussions of ancient cities.
MAKING ancient
Cities
Rome stands out among the cities addressed in this volume as a well-documented and much-studied imperial capital. Chang'an, although less-well known in western scholarship, also served as the center of a vast empire - the Han Dynasty, which ruled much of China until the early twentieth century. In her contribution to this volume (Chapter io), Anna Razeto examines these two cities in comparative perspective from the second century BC through the second century AD using the lens of facilities for craft production and retail. This period witnessed the transition of Rome from republic to far-flung empire. Under Augustus and his successors, the city was remade through various monumental building projects that gloriied the imperial family, providing a conceptual model for the types of
Monuments and urban developments that should be given priority in cities throughout the empire (e. g., DeLaine 2008:108). These projects included new market and retaIl spaces needed to accommodate the demands of Rome's burgeoning population.
Sophisticated state-level sociopolitical organization existed in China at least since the Xia and Shang civilizations of the Bronze Age. A recent assessment of urbanism in pre-Imperial China suggests, however, that the spatial environment lacked many crucial features of urbanism seen elsewhere and that true cities did not emerge until the period of the Warring States capitals (481-221 BC; part of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty) - only then did cities become a "defining ingredient of Chinese civilization" (von Falkenhausen 2008:227; also Chang 1974). This period saw the rise of a substantial population of commoners in the capital cities who were not direct dependents of the rulers' courts and who pursued commerce and craft production (von Falkenhausen 2008:226). Urban form and function changed as cities expanded to accommodate specialized crafts and designated residential areas, resulting in the integration of royal administration wIth production and market exchanges (Shen 2003). This process of urbanization brought together a large number of residents with a wide variety of skills who contributed to the transformation of purely royal cities into the commercial-based urban centers of the Imperial period (Shen 1994, 2003).
Razeto compares and contrasts Chang'an and Rome in order to discern how state power and ideology structured city space. Instead of looking at the palaces, the traditional foci of imperial power, Razeto examines how the state determined the location, form, and function of markets and facilities for specialized production. She argues that although practical considerations - including ease of access, transport, and proximity to raw materials - contributed significantly to the form and placement of markets and manufacturing facilities for brick, metals, and other goods in Rome anD China, state ideology, political interests, and elite consumption also played key roles. To control and protect commerce, Rome and China built elaborate markets that not only trumpeted state power and served as symbols of the city, but that also provided important foci of social interaction. In a nod to low-level spatial production, Razeto notes that despite state intervention in the structuring of market and manufacturing space, the workers in these professions were often independent producers with a hand in structuring their work space within the imperial edifice or city plan.
Razeto believes that the lack of civil rights for commoners in Chinese cities limited their agency in structuring city space, but surely their daily activities moDified the spaces in which they lived worked.
World History
