Ancient Plazas for Modern Cities: A Role for Archaeology in City Planning Today

Summary

For thousands of years, plazas have served as spaces for public gatherings. Modern plazas continue to serve many of the same functions as ancient plazas, providing a foundation for comparative studies. Archaeologists have begun to recognize the importance of incorporating modern studies of public spaces into their work, but in order for archaeology to remain relevant, we must engage with and contribute to studies of the modern world. It is necessary for us to work with scholars in these fields so that our studies can be truly interdisciplinary. In this presentation, I engage with landscape architects and urban planners to show how we can employ archaeological data to contribute to the discussion of modern public spaces. I use a dataset from ancient Maya plazas to support arguments for the continued importance of plazas and parks throughout cities and present this data in a way that is meaningful and useful for city planners. The organization of public spaces in ancient cities serves as a template for the layout of modern cities, creating communities and fostering placemaking.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage