Because the amount of walled, protected space wIthin a city is limited, and extending city walls, streets, and other infrastructure is
Expensive, it should not be surprising if central institutions - and residents themselves - attempt to control the distribution of space within the city. In the cities discussed in this chapter there is evidence for similar lot sizes in residential areas at Titris, Chuera, and Leilan, and in the monumental buIldings of Area i at Kazane (Matney 2002:27; Pfalzner 1997; Ristvet 2005:hgure 3.11; Creekmore 2008, 2010). These similar lots are not seen in all periods, but when they appear, they demonstrate what Peter Pfalzner terms Parzellenhauser, or parceled houses (Pfalzner 1997). The parceled houses identified by Pfalzner come in standard widths of 6, 7.5, 9, 12, or 15 meters, and have similar ground plans (Pfalzner 1997:igure 8). At Chuera and Bderi, these standard plots are limited to a specific time frame, 2600-2450 BC. After this period, non-parceled houses replace some parceled lots at Chuera and parceled lots disappear altogether at Bderi. Pfalzner argues that parceled lots are evidence for centralized city planning and their disappearance is owing to thinning of the city population and increasing ethnic diversity (Pfalzner 1997:251, 258).
Although the similar lot dimensions identified by Pfalzner seem to indicate an organized distribution of city land, they do not necessarily reflect top-down city planning. Instead, these lots indicate that the standard units for measuring land were agreed upon and upheld by the residents (Smith 2007:29). Rather than marking a top-down city plan, similarly sized lots are an efficient way of managing land. These lots facilitate construction of similarly sized houses and minimize space lost to leftover spaces that are too small or too large for a practical house. Regardless of lot size, residents could expand or shrink their houses by buying or selling rooms to or from adjacent structures, a practice noted in later periods in Lower Mesopotamia (Stone 2007:217; Van De Mieroop 1999:256). Thus, a homeowner could purchase two rooms from an adjacent house and incorporate them into his own house by cutting doorways into adjacent walls and blocking entrances from the new rooms to the now smaller neighboring house.
The most convincing case of house lots as evidence of formal planning comes from Titri§, where double walls bound plots of land with regular dimensions in the outer town (Matney 2002; see also Nishimura's discussion of the 2300 BC reconstruction, Chapter 3 In this volume). These plots are not equivalent to individual houses. Instead, multiple-walled plots are combined to form
PRODUCTION OF SPACE IN MESOPOTAMIAN CITIES
Figure 2.8 Titri§, building lots in the outer town (generated from Algaze et al. 2001:figure 2, and Matney 2002:26). Note doubled walls and possible cul-de-sac. Cf. Nishimura, Chapter 3 in this volume,
Houses of various sizes, which together are founded on regular, walled terraces (Figure 2.8). In addition, in some cases, the walls within these plots share the same orientation across multiple plots, houses, and streets (Matney 2002:27). Thus, although the internal division of space within each house differs, the plots themselves and their main walls were laid according to supra-household spatial principles, perhaps by developers (Algaze et al. 2001:69; Matney 2002:27). In sum, although parceled lots do indicate some level of land management within the city, they do not necessarily indicate a formal plan designed at the supra-household level except when combined with shared architectural principles and features.
World History
