Urban Life in the Distant Past: A New Approach to Early Urbanism

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

I describe a new approach to understanding life and social dynamics in premodern cities around the world. Early cities varied considerably in their political and economic organization and dynamics. My approach is transdisciplinary in scope, scientific in epistemology, and anchored in the urban literature of the social sciences. The central concept is “energized crowding,” an idea that captures the consequences of social interactions within the built environment that result from increases in population size and density. I explore the implications of features such as empires, states, markets, households, and neighborhoods for urban life and society. Direct influences on urban life—as mediated by energized crowding—can be organized into institutional (top-down) forces and generative (bottom-up) processes. I discuss similarities and differences with contemporary cities, and highlight the relevance of ancient cities for understanding urbanism and its challenges today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35613.0