We hope these case studies will challenge specialists to look outside their regions for inspiration in analyzing and interpreting the production of urban space. We also hope that readers will be inspired to apply the insights of this volume to the problems of the contemporary world. The year 2009 brought a significant milestone in human existence when, for the first time, the majority of the earth's population (50.1%) was living in urban environments; by 2050, that figure is predicted to rise to 68.7% (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2012). Given the challenges faced by researchers in a number of disciplines in trying to understand the profound behavioral, social, and ecological effects of urban life, archaeology is in a unique position to provide much-needed time depth to these issues, offering insight into urbanism's origins and contributing to a diachronic perspective concerning the relationship between people and cities and the sustainability of urban systems (e. g., M. E. Smith 2010b). Many of the great urban theorists have recognized the need to understand the ancient roots of urbanism as a way to observe long-term social dynamics relevant to the cities in which we live today (Jacobs 1969; Mumford 1961; Soja 2000).
Going forward, the study of ancient cities must consider the agency of people at multiple social scales in the production of space, in addition to the standard attention to macro-level processes of population growth, environmental change, and international relations. A special challenge in most world regions is gaining a more representative view of the development of city space over time through examination of stratified and well-contextualized changes in the buIlt environment. In this regard, the impact of geophysics and remote-sensing methods will continue to be significant as improvements in technology and analysis bring more data to bear on large-scale studies of the built environment of cities. Another challenge is weighing the diversity of urban form, both within and between world regions, and forging a way for comparative analysis while maintaining the richness of specific cases. A fruitful approach to this problem is to identify comparable features among cities and subject them
To contextualized analysis. For example, in this volume Creekmore (Chapter 2) identifies several key features of Mesopotamian cities and discusses them as discrete categories that demonstrate both similarities and differences among cities in this region. These categories could be extended to other world regions for both intra - and interregional comparative studies, with the goal of making sense of diversity without losing sight of culturally specific developments (cf. Arnauld et al. 2012).
To access the making of cities, as described here, future studies would benefit from greater consideration of how cities form and change, rather than just their origins, demise, or snapshot-form in a given time period. Meeting this challenge requires attention to general laws and processes as well as the daily actions of residents. Comparative studies offer great promise in this regard, but rich case studies provide necessary material for comparison. If we really care about "what life was like" in ancient times, then we need more of the kinds of studies that we have in this volume: cross-regional comparative studies, as in Razeto's Chapter 10; intra-regional studies, as seen in chapters by Creekmore (Chapter 2), Fisher (Chapter 6), Stark (Chapter 11), and Wynne-Jones and Fleisher (Chapter 4); and individual case studies, as seen in chapters by Nishimura (Chapter 3); Magnoni et al. (Chapter 5); Buell (Chapter 8); Fitzsimons (Chapter 7); and Kelly and Brown (Chapter 9).
Ideally, studies of ancient cities should blend macroscale and microscale data, as demonstrated by Nishimura's Chapter 3 of this volume, which incorporates both piece-plotted household artifacts and city-wide house and street patterns idenTified in geophysical data. This approach is only possible in the context of long-term projects, a task made increasingly difficult by short-term grants and the ebb and flow of international politics. One solution to this challenge is increased collaboration between archaeologists, both local and international, to work together on megaprojects - by which we mean large, long-term research staffed by multiple specialists working with great numbers of scholars. These kinds of projects present substantial logistical and political challenges, but can yield a more complete picture of urban form and change over time than small-scale, short-duration projects, especially in cases where geophysical data are less revealing owing to local characteristics of geology and archaeological features.
Studies of ancient cities would also beneFit from more attention to open spaces in the built environment, both theoretically
And archaeologically. These spaces can often be identified in plans derived from geophysics, while the interpretation of their use must incorporate both archaeological data and ethnohistoric or ethnographic analogy. Stark's Chapter 11 In this volume serves as a benchmark in the study of open spaces in ancient cities, especially for Mesoamerica, but she also identifies parallel developments in other world regions. Many other chapters in this volume recognize the importance of open spaces, including Kelly and Brown's study (Chapter 9) of Cahokia, where open spaces served as focal points for various plaza groups across this North American city.
MAKING ANCIENT CITIES
Finally, future studies of ancient cities would do well to include both well-known "type" sites that exemplify key features of cities in a given region, as well as lesser-known, but equally important, newly studied cities - cities of different sizes, and cities with features that do not align perfectly with the standard-setting cases. Attention to the full range of cities in regions around the world enriches our understanding of ancient cities, modifies our models of urban form and change, and enhances the potential for comparative analysis within and between regions. The studies in this volume indicate the strength of this approach, bringing new light to well-known cases such as Rome, Chang'an, and Monte Alban, as well as lesser-known cases, or cases overshadowed by earlier or contemporary cities in the same or nearby regions, such as Kazane Hoyuk anD Titris Hoyuk in Upper Mesopotamia, Chunchucmil in the Maya Lowlands, and cities of Swahili eastern Africa, Crete, and Cyprus. This volume also addresses cases for which not all scholars would apply the term "cIty," such as Cahokia or Galatas.
Despite the longstanding interest in ancient cities, it is clear that there is still a great deal of work to be done in understanding the recursive relationship between urban environments and the social lives of their inhabitants. Yet, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, we have never been in a better position to take up this challenge as new theoretical frameworks, analytical approaches, and methodological innovations provide the impetus for what promises to be an exciting new chapter in the investigation of ancient cities.
World History
