Urbanism (Other Keyword)
51-75 (204 Records)
During the 4th millennium BC a number of considerably big settlements have developed in the territory of modern Ukraine, thus constituting the biggest sites in Europe at that time. Mostly investigated only as single entities these "mega-sites" have never been considered thoroughly as part of the whole landscape of Trypillia settlements. Some scholars have argued that these could have been examples of early formed urban centres (aka "proto-cities"), others, instead, proposed that these were big...
Early Mixtec Urbanization at Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past studies of early urbanism in Formative Oaxaca, Mexico, have highlighted evidence of the construction of monumental architecture, increased population densities, and the expansion of Middle to Late Formative period occupations onto defensive hilltops. In the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, investigations at urban centers, such as Cerro Jazmín, Monte Negro, and...
Early Urban Configurations in Mahan, Korea: Local and Regional Approaches to Settlements dated to 100 BCE-CE 300 (2017)
Mahan, composed of 54 polities in central and southwestern Korea, grew rapidly from 100 BCE to CE 300, by which time it covered about 40,000 square kilometers, with a population of roughly 500,000. During much of this time, urban zones became the dominant residential mode at both local and regional levels, but without suggesting a strong central authority. No unequivocal capital cities have been identified. At the same time, there is evidence of a dual-urban organization with distinctive...
Early Urbanism and Intermediate-Scale Social Interaction in Formative Central Mexico: Ritual Practice and Socio-spatial Organization at Tlalancaleca, Puebla (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico. Our ongoing research indicates large-scale urban transformations in the transition from the Middle to Late Formative period. Tlalancaleca during the later Formative is characterized by a multi-centric spatial organization consisting of multiple monumental...
Early Urbanism in Central Mexico: Preliminary Results of the Tlalancaleca Archaeological Project, Puebla (2015)
Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico and likely provided cultural and historical settings for the creation of Central Mexican urban traditions during later periods. Yet its urbanization process as well as socio-spatial organization remain poorly understood. This paper presents preliminary results of mapping, ground survey, surface collection, manual auger probe, and test excavations, which were carried out over the three seasons of...
El Jobillo Settlement Cluster: A Classic Maya Neighborhood? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Some significant social and spatial units of organization and analysis include neighborhoods, wards and zones. These intermediate scale units are important to understand Maya social organization and integration, especially in dispersed or sparsely populated regions such as La Corona’s in northwest Petén, Guatemala. This paper assesses criteria regarding the...
El manejo del agua en Monte Albán-Atzompa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La recolección y almacenamiento de agua pluvial es una de las prácticas más antiguas en Mesoamérica. La investigación arqueológica en diversos sitios ha permitido la identificación y documentación de sistemas de canales, depósitos subterráneos, galerías filtrantes y almacenamiento en recipientes, el sistema de desagües y el más común que son los depósitos...
El Triangulo del Sur: Izapa, Takalik Abaj, and El Ujuxte (2015)
The Pacific Coast borderlands of Chiapas and Guatemala were home to at least three major urban centers in the Late Preclassic Period: Izapa, Takalik Abaj, and El Ujuxte. How these sites were related to one another through intellectual exchanges and commerce tells us a great deal about the nature of urbanism in Mesomamerica during the Late Preclassic Period. These three sites were part of a broader southern "City-State Culture" that included Kaminaljuyu, Chalchuapa, and other early urban...
The Emergence of New Urban Nodes in Qing Period Mongolia (Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Century): Contrasting Roles and Histories of Monastic and Military Sites (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of Medieval Eurasian Steppe Urbanism" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Mongolia, the relation between sedentary urban and mobile herder lifeways has constituted a key socioeconomic and political factor for more than a millennium. This history is most prominently present in the Orkhon valley, preserving traces of various urban centers including the Medieval capital of Karakorum. Much less is known about...
The emergence of the Bel'sk settlement complex:landscape, population histories, and social structure (2017)
During the Pontic Iron Age, ca. 700-300 BCE, large fortified settlement complexes that encompass areas between 100 ha and 5,000 ha emerged along the forest-steppe and steppe boundary in Ukraine. At Bel'sk, the largest settlement complex of its kind with three separate settlements were linked by a fortification wall spanning 33 kilometers, delineating a massive urban internal space from its hinterlands. Despite one hundred years of periodic archaeological investigation, much about the Bel'sk...
Ethiopia's Peripatetic Royal Capitals and Prospects for Their Study (2016)
From the 13th to 17th centuries, emperors of Ethiopia, attended by the royal court, largely abandoned rule from fixed capitals in favor of a migratory lifestyle suited to projecting imperial power across an unruly collection of subjugated states and territories. At its peak, this system of administration was formalized into a highly regulated assembly of people with the visual and functional attributes of a royal urban center, though it lacked the spatial permanency of a conventional city. The...
The Evolution of a Revolution: "The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization." (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Before the 1960s, books about ancient urbanism and cities often included no references to the prehispanic Americas. V. Gordon Childe’s "urban revolution" was conceived as a phenomenon of the "Old World" as the "cradle of cradle of civilization." Landmark projects in Central Mexico:...
Examining Flaked Stone from Caracol, Belize, at the Urban Scale (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Urban Question: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Investigating the Ancient Mesoamerican City" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Household and city scales are typical units of archaeological analysis at Maya sites. More recent models of urban space include intermediate scales referred to as “neighborhoods” that encompass clusters of households and “districts” that effectively integrate neighborhoods. Using flaked stone...
Formal Open Space and its Relationship to Governance in Premodern Cities (2016)
Formally defined open spaces in cities give people a designated forum for interaction and impact how common people perceive each other and their authority. There is a critical lack of understanding of the origin of these spaces in the earliest cities and their social contexts. I will examine a sample of premodern cities, including archaeologically and historically documented examples, to clarify why formal open spaces exist, both in ancient cities and modern ones. This project stems from...
Formal Open Space at Teotihuacan (2017)
The lack of large plazas at Teotihuacan has led archaeologists to claim that Teotihuacan was a city with very little public open space. There are, however, many smaller assembly areas distributed around the city. The Teotihuacan Mapping Project identified a large number of "plazas" in the city but the criteria were subjective and the data were never analyzed. I have filtered these data by applying a more formal definition of plaza than the initial field criteria used by the Mapping Project....
Formative Urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca Basin (2016)
Archaeologists tend to apply the term ‘formative’ to phases of emergent complexity in a given world region. I critically engage the concept by honing in on what I term incipient urbanism as a core dimension of formative complexity. I draw on comparative data from across the Americas to situate formative complexity and incipient urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca basin. Archaeologists working in the region have known for years that by at least 800 BC, the region was home to multiple...
From compass to LiDAR: 40 years of mapping the Tarascan cities of the Malpaís of Zacapu, Northwestern Mexico. (2017)
Since their discovery in the late XIXth century, the large prehispanic urban settlements located close to the modern town of Zacapu (State of Michoacán, Mexico) have confronted the archaeologists to a great challenge: mapping, and understanding 200 hectares of dense and well preserved urban features founded on the Malpaís of Zacapu (a complex formed by ancient lava flows). Interpreted as premises of the Tarascan State (occupation 1250-1450 AD), these cities constitute an unprecedented regional...
From Liburnian to Ottoman: Unraveling Settlement History at Nadin-Gradina, Croatia (2017)
Ancient cityscapes with long occupational histories have great potential for reconstructing changes in social structure, spatial planning, political governance, identity, economy, environment, and climate. Recovering such information, however, poses many challenges, both human and financial. Archaeological deposits are often deeply buried and palimpsestic, representing a complex mixture of processes including collapse, partial abandonment, repurposing, and reoccupation. Yet, anthropological...
Geoarchaeology of Terraces and Building XVI at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus: Evidence for Site Formation and Settlement Activity (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geoarchaeological research conducted in 2019-2020 as part of the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments (KAMBE) project focused on collecting multiscalar and high-resolution geoarchaeological data from the Late Bronze Age city of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios in south-central Cyprus. The aim of the geoarchaeological project is to determine the uses of space in...
Geophysical Studies in the Archaeological Site of Chicoloapan, Estado de Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we present integrated archaeological and prospection data from Chicoloapan, in the Estado de Mexico, generated by drone aerial photo, topographic survey, electric, magnetic, and georadar techniques. These data result from three years of research by the Proyecto Arqueológico...
GIS Analysis of Domestic Structures at the Late Moche Site of Galindo (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Galindo was a major center of the Southern Moche Region during the Late Moche Period (600–900 A.D.) During this period, the Moche Valley center appears to have undergone socio-political change, resulting in a new monumental style. In order to investigate possible changes in the domestic sectors, a series of spatial analyses were completed on the...
GIS Analysis of the Road Network at the Postclassic Purépecha Site of Angamuco, Mexico (2018)
The growing adoption of LiDAR for archaeological analysis makes determining how ancient peoples modified, interacted and moved through the landscape more practical. Initial analysis of the LiDAR produced imagery covering the Postclassic (1000-1520 CE) Purépecha site of Angamuco, located in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin of Michoacán, Mexico showed a highly urbanized multi-nucleated settlement sprawled across 26km2 of an ancient lava flow, with a complex urban structure. Here I discuss the results from...
Good Living in Hard Times: De-Urbanization and Personal Wealth in Nineteenth Century New Market, Maryland (2018)
New Market is a small community in Frederick County, Maryland, whose origins and early nineteenth century economic peak are tied to travel and trade, on the National Turnpike. Following the development of the B&O railroad during the mid-nineteenth century, use of the turnpike declined, subsequently shrinking the town’s economy. Excavations sponsored by the Maryland State Highways Administration have recovered datasets from two properties in New Market. Identified components include a late...
The Growth Trajectories of Mesoamerican Cities (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The growth trajectory of a city through time is responsive to both internal and external forces. The shapes of such trajectories provide information about a variety of social, political, and economic processes that operated in the past. We present and analyze data from both well-excavated cities and regional settlement surveys in Mesoamerica. The patterns we...
Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use On the Central Floodplain at the Euphrates (1980)
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