Attila Gyucha 
Coming Together [EPUB ebook] 
Comparative Approaches to Population Aggregation and Early Urbanization

The pursuit for universally applicable definitions of the terms ‘urban’ and ‘city’ has frequently distracted scholars from scrutinizing processes of how ancient nucleated settlements evolved and developed. Based on the premise that similar social dynamics to a great extent governed nucleation trajectories throughout human history,
Coming Together focuses on both prehistoric aggregated and early urban settlements. Drawing from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, archaeologists, anthropologists, and classicists discuss how nucleation unfolded in strikingly different sociopolitical contexts in North America, Europe, and the Near East. The major themes of the volume are nucleation’s origins, pathways to sustainability, and the transformative role of these sites in sociopolitical and cultural change.

Tabella dei contenuti

Illustrations



1. Population Aggregation and Early Urbanization from a Comparative Perspective: An Introduction to the Volume


Attila Gyucha



2. Energized Crowding and the Generative Role of Settlement Aggregation and Urbanization


Michael E. Smith




Part I. Coming Together: Origins and Processes



3. ‘. . . the nearest run thing . . .’ The Genesis and Collapse of a Bronze Age Polity in the Maros Valley of Southeastern Europe


John M. O’Shea and
Amy Nicodemus



4. Coming Together in the Iron Age: Population Aggregation and Urban Dynamics in Temperate Europe


Manuel Fernandez-Gotz



5. Contextualizing Aggregation and Nucleation as Demographic Processes Leading to Cahokia’s Emergence as an Incipient Urban Center


John E. Kelly



6. Why Athens? Population Aggregation in Attica in the Early Iron Age


Robin Osborne



7.
Synoikismos: Formation and Form of Ancient Greek Cities


Bradley A. Ault




Part II. Pathways to Sustainability: Challenges and Resolutions



8. Trypillia Megasites: The First Cities in Europe?


Bisserka Gaydarska



9. Emergent Urbanism: Trade, Settlement, and Society at Seyitomer Hoyuk in Early Bronze Age Western Anatolia


Laura K. Harrison and
A. Nejat Bilgen



10. If You Build It, Will They Come? Will They Stay? The Mycenaean Port Town of Kalamianos


Daniel J. Pullen

11. Architectural Visibility as an Integrating Mechanism in Roman Urbanism: Micro-Viewshed Analysis at Pompeii


Alan Kaiser




Part III. Transformative Effects: Social, Political, and Cultural Change



12. Cross-Scale Settlement Morphologies and Social Formations in the Neolithic of the Great Hungarian Plain


Pal Raczky



13. Aggregation and Dispersal: Rural Landscapes of the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula from the Iron Age to the Early Roman Empire


Ines Sastre and
Brais Curras



14. Integration and Disintegration: The Role of Kiva Architecture in Community Formation during the Pueblo II and Pueblo III Periods in the U.S. Southwest


Susan C. Ryan



15. Settlement Aggregation and Geopolitical Realignment in the Northeastern Woodlands


Jennifer Birch



Contributors

Index

Circa l’autore

Attila Gyucha is Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History and the author of
Prehistoric Village Social Dynamics: the Early Copper Age in the Körös Region.