Early Urbanism in Northern Mesopotamia

McMahon, Augusta

doi:10.1007/s10814-019-09136-7

Cited by 49 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 128 publications

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“…The second major population turnover in Europe is contemporary with the urban revolution and coincided with the establishment of early city states in southwest Asia. In Mesopotamia, scholars believe social stratification started in the Ubaid period, in the fifth millennium BC, while real urbanism and centralized leadership developed during the fourth millennium BC Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia and, probably independent from that, in the Late Chalkolithic (LC) 2 and 3 periods in northern Mesopotamia (Algaze 2009;McMahon 2019;Oates et al 2007;Stein 2012;Ur et al 2007). Early states are characterized-among many other things-by institutionalized social stratification, which was established and upheld by coercive force.…”

Section: Early Urbanization As a Context To Social Processes In Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution

Furholt

2021

J Archaeol Res

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This paper discusses and synthesizes the consequences of the archaeogenetic revolution to our understanding of mobility and social change during the Neolithic period in Europe (6500–2000 BC). In spite of major obstacles to a productive integration of archaeological and anthropological knowledge with ancient DNA data, larger changes in the European gene pool are detected and taken as indications for large-scale migrations during two major periods: the Early Neolithic expansion into Europe (6500–4000 BC) and the third millennium BC “steppe migration.” Rather than massive migration events, I argue that both major genetic turnovers are better understood in terms of small-scale mobility and human movement in systems of population circulation, social fission and fusion of communities, and translocal interaction, which together add up to a large-scale signal. At the same time, I argue that both upticks in mobility are initiated by the two most consequential social transformations that took place in Eurasia, namely the emergence of farming, animal husbandry, and sedentary village life during the Neolithic revolution and the emergence of systems of centralized political organization during the process of urbanization and early state formation in southwest Asia.

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Section: Early Urbanization As a Context To Social Processes In Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution

Furholt

2021

J Archaeol Res

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“…In addition, it is worth remembering that "all that glitters is not gold," and negative effects of urban living should also be taken into account (McMahon 2020). In social studies, cities and towns are indeed considered as vectors of overexploitation of natural resources, social inequality and social conflicts, crowding, poverty, and disease (Algaze 2018;McMahon 2020;Scott 2017).…”

Section: Reframing Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the dynamics and development of hinterlands during the Iron Age have been scarcely addressed and understood in northern Italy, as excavation projects and regional studies have been primarily focused on major sites, with few comparative analyses and overviews. Town-hinterland relations, and the complex strategies beyond food supply and the extraction of other subsistence goods, e.g., timber, should be a focus of further research, as well as the social impact of towns on rural communities (Cowley et al 2019;Falconer 1994;McMahon 2020;Smith 2014).…”

Section: Rural Sites and Hinterlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Urbanization of Northern Italy: Contextualizing Early Settlement Nucleation in the Po Valley

Zamboni

2021

J Archaeol Res

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Recent excavations and theoretical advances have revealed evidence of an early and perhaps independent nucleation and centralization process in the region south of the Alps, a phenomenon that has been undervalued in previous studies. In this paper I present a broad overview and attempt to reassess the role of the Cisalpine regions as crossroads of trade and cultural transfer between the Mediterranean and central Europe through a critical evaluation of key archaeological evidence. I adopt alternative and up-to-date perspectives on the urbanization phenomenon, disentangling commonsensical and text-driven definitions of urbanism and social formation, while challenging the outdated “check-list” approach. This theoretical framework should promote a paradigm shift that leads to a substantial backdating and broadening of the appearance of complex site agglomerations in northern Italy, avoiding unidirectional development patterns and instead looking at possible cases of instability, ephemerality, and seasonality. The adoption of a comparative perspective triggers a timely disentanglement of the simplistic equation between urbanism and social hierarchy. Beyond a narrow and selective emphasis on elites, this paper considers alternative social entities and actions, including commoners, subaltern groups, and cooperation.

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“…This means changes in size are recognized and dated with greater precision. Larger sites demonstrate different trajectories to rural settlement over this period [ 36 , 37 ] and acted as both economic and political centers [ 38 ]. For example, evidence from both agricultural modelling [ 39 , 40 ] and combined textual and archaeological sources [ 41 ] indicate that by the second half of the Early Bronze Age (4,600–4,000 cal BP) large sites could not farm sufficient land to feed their inhabitants and were reliant on rural production to supplement staple products.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collapse and continuity: A multi-proxy reconstruction of settlement organization and population trajectories in the Northern Fertile Crescent during the 4.2kya Rapid Climate Change event

2021

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The rise and fall of ancient societies have been attributed to rapid climate change events. One of the most discussed of these is the 4.2kya event, a period of increased aridity and cooling posited as the cause of societal changes across the globe, including the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia. Studies seeking to correlate social and climatic changes around the 4.2kya event have tended to focus either on highly localized analyses of specific sites or surveys or more synthetic overviews at pan-continental scales, and temporally on the event and its aftermath. Here we take an empirical approach at a large spatial scale to investigate trends in population and settlement organization across the entirety of Northern Fertile Crescent (Northern Mesopotamia and the Northern Levant) from 6,000 to 3,000 cal BP. We use Summed Probability Distributions of radiocarbon dates and data from eighteen archaeological surveys as proxies for population, and a dataset of all settlements over ten hectares in size as a proxy for the degree of urbanization. The goal is to examine the spatial and temporal impact of the 4.2kya event and to contextualize it within longer term patterns of settlement. We find that negative trends are visible during the event horizon in all three proxies. However, these occur against a long-term trend of increased population and urbanization supported through unsustainable overshoot and the exploitation of a drier zone with increased risk of crop failure. We argue that the 4.2kya event occurred during a period of unprecedented urban and rural growth which may have been unsustainable even without an exogenous climate forcing.

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Early Urbanism in Northern Mesopotamia

Cited by 49 publications

References 128 publications

Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution

Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution

The Urbanization of Northern Italy: Contextualizing Early Settlement Nucleation in the Po Valley

Collapse and continuity: A multi-proxy reconstruction of settlement organization and population trajectories in the Northern Fertile Crescent during the 4.2kya Rapid Climate Change event

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