In an urban context, gardens and parks form part of settlement open space along with streets, plazas, and other installations, such as ball courts in Mesoamerica. Open space differs from roofed architecture and other structures (e. g., pyramidal platforms) in many uses, but the two may interdigitate in planned arrangements, such as porticos, which are open-air but roofed. Modern, historic, and archaeological approaches to urban open spaces have developed in different disciplines, leading to somewhat disparate conceptual frameworks and emphases. From the point of view of urban planning, Al-Hagla (2008:164-165) subdivides modern open space into green or gray space, according to whether plantings versus paving or other hard landscaping prevail (including dirt surfaces). Among the categories of green space, elaborate gardens and parks are my focus. Green and gray spaces form a punctuated continuum because many open spaces are designed with a mixture of features in varying proportions, as in the case of house lots (Killion 1990, 1992). An elaborate park or garden may include paved terraces or walkways (even a modern parking lot may have meager marginal vegetation required by city codes). Nevertheless, there are a number of open areas for which green or gray space is a hallmark, such as plazas versus gardens; the two concepts are useful to highlight quite contrastive design and function.
I define gardens as well-delimited cultivated open spaces with a strongly designed live organic content, normally smaller in area than parks and usually more diverse in plant inventory than fields (polyculture gardens for food production are usually distinguished
Terminologically from fields, which at a given time have monoculture or a few inter-planted crops). Parks intergrade with gardens in the degree and kinds of manipulation (e. g., MacDougall 1972:41-44), sharing with them the characteristic of a delimited space, but accommodating less intensive efforts in a more extensive terrain - even if parts are intensively modified (see Creighton 2009 concerning English hunting parks, which may contain palaces and gardens within them). In ancient complex societies, both gardens and parks often have a residential association (although it may be part time). Gardens and parks vary in the proportions of food, raw material, condiment, and medicinal production versus aesthetic and symbolic content. Across the broad range from home gardens to elaborate, palatial gardens and parks, neither comestibles nor symbols and aesThetics are an exclusive focus.
Home gardens are intensively cuLtivated areas near dwellings, usually geared to a mix of foods, condiments, ornamentals, medicines, or raw materials; these contents are more prominent than those linked to social ostentation (Turner and Sanders 1992:265-266). Elaborate gardens may be attached to elite palaces, and some constitute royal pleasure grounds that mix state and social functions. Much of the organic content may be selected for symbolic or aesthetic reasons. In Mesoamerican archaeological research, home gardens have received the greatest amount of discussion and intergrade in a continuum with infeld and outfield cultivation (e. g., Ball and Kelsay 1992; Dunning 1992; Hughbanks 1998; Isendahl 2002; Killion 1992; Killion et al. 1989; Smyth et al. 1995; see also Magnoni et al., Chapter 5 In this volume). The residential space may include both home gardens and outside cleared work areas (gray space [Killion 1990:202-203]). Among elaborate, ostentatious gardens and parks, Aztec royaL installations are the only Mesoamerican examples that have been analyzed, primarily through documents (Alva Ixtlilxochitl 1985[1868]:115-116; Evans 2000, 2004; Medina 1997; Mendizabal 1925; Moreno and Torres 2002; Musset 1986; Nuttall 1923; Solis Olguin 2002).
Groves may be the primary constituents in gardens or parks (Bonnechere 2007; Chandrashekara and Sankar 1998; Evans 2000:209-211; Falade 1984; Sheridan 2008; Uchiyamada 1998:181) or form an element of an internally differentiated garden or park. Groves are concentrations of trees largely cleared of any understory wood (Phibbs 1991:181). In many African societies, a solitary tree of
Particular species may come to represent functions of a grove and have monumental or memorial roles (Ross 1995:223-231, 2002:58-62, 2008). In Mesoamerica, species of symbolic importance included the ceiba (Ceiba pentandra, lowland tropics) and ahuehuete (Taxodium mucronatum Tenor, highland Mexico) (Granziera 2001). These trees or others may have appeared in green spaces, either solitary or in groves, including sacred groves (Gomez-Pompa et al. 1990). Also, cacao (Theobroma cacao L.), for its special economic and social value, may have been a component of gardens and parks where environmental conditions permitted. I include groves in the scope of gardens anD parks.
ANCIENT OPEN SPACE, GARDENS, AND PARKS
Architecture, rather than open space, has predominated in anthropological and archaeological studies of urbanism; in Lawrence and Low's (1990:455) review of urban studies, for example, green space is scarcely mentioned. Among open spaces, plazas (spaces framed by buildings) have attracted ethnographic research (e. g., Low 2000) and archaeological studies (e. g., Inomata 2006; Moore 1996). Beyond anthropology in modern contexts, urban open spaces usually are part of planning public space (e. g., Carmona et al. 2008), wIth open space and public space sometimes treated interchangeably; however, authors often are more concerned with democratic ideals of the public sphere than with the physical qualities of open space. In New Urbanist planning, open space is often evaluated in terms of framing buildings and their uses (Duany et al. 2010:10.1; see also Jacobs 1993[1961]:123, 125), partly analogous to the "delimited open space" concept employed by Wynne-Jones and Fleisher (see Chapter 4 In this volume). In the New Urbanism, although access to "nature" is described as a basic right, types of green space and their social functions are given little attention (Duany et al. 2010:4.10, 6.4).
In Mesoamerican archaeology, puBlic gray space has received more attention than green space, especially plazas because of their intimate association with buildings, accommodation of assemblies, and frequent use for display of sculpture or low platforms for rituals. Like plazas, open-air ball courts had importance early in Mesoamerica, ca. 1600 BC (Hill and Clark 2001). Even earlier in preceramic times, Gheo-Shih yielded a cleared area 20 by 7 m, lined by cobbles; it has been interpreted as a dance ground (Marcus and Flannery 1996:59), but may have been a ball court in view oF its morphological resemblance to courts with flanking cobbles in Chihuahua and Sonora (Whalen and Minnis 1996:735-736).
In archaeology, we often are confronted by mapped cities or towns for which architectural and topographic features are recorded, but for which open spaces cannot be characterized as green or gray without excavation. Were we able to characterize open spaces more accurately within these two categories, we would have an improved basis for comparing urban forms. Such information would be particularly useful for gauging (1) the extent to which food production may have been conducted within the urban environment; (2) the extent of social ostentation in gardens and parks; (3) the opportunities for highly flexible social interactions and communications in certain kinds of open spaces, such as streets and plazas that could facilitate "bottom-up" social initiatives (see Wynne-Jones and Fleisher, Chapter 4 in this volume, for Swahili cities and Creekmore, Chapter 2 in this volume, for Upper Mesopotamia); and (4) the nature of urban boundaries. As addressed in this chapter, measurement of urban open space itself offers some analytical advantages for settlement comparisons.
World History
