The Cambridge World History, Volume 3: Early Cities in Comparative Perspective, 4000 BCE-1200 CE

About this book

From the fourth millennium BCE to the early second millennium CE the world became a world of cities. This volume explores this critical transformation, from the appearance of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the rise of cities in Asia and the Mediterranean world, Africa, and the Americas. Through case studies and comparative accounts of key cities across the world, leading scholars chart the ways in which these cities grew as nodal points of pilgrimages and ceremonies, exchange, storage and redistribution, and centres for defence and warfare. They show how in these cities, along with their associated and restructured countrysides, new rituals and ceremonies connected leaders with citizens and the gods, new identities as citizens were created, and new forms of power and sovereignty emerged. They also examine how this unprecedented concentration of people led to disease, violence, slavery and subjugations of unprecedented kinds and scales.

Contents

1. Introduction: a history of the study of early cities Norman Yoffee and Nicola Terrenato

Part I. Early Cities as Arenas of Performance:
2. Ancient Egyptian cities: monumentality and performance John Baines
3. The dedicated city: meaning and morphology in classic Maya urbanism Stephen Houston and Thomas G. Garrison
4. Southeast Asian urbanism: from early city to classical state Miriam Stark
5. Cities as performance John Baines, Miriam Stark, Thomas G. Garrison and Stephen Houston

Part II. Early Cities and Information Technologies:
6. Urbanization and techniques of communication: the case of the rise of the southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk during the fourth millennium BCE Hans Nissen
7. Writing and the city in early China Wang Haicheng
8. Reading early Maya cities: interpreting the role of writing in urbanization Danny Law
9. Inka administration in Tawantinsuyu by means of the knotted-cords Gary Urton
10. Writing and record-keeping in early cities Danny Law, Wang Haicheng, Hans Nissen and Gary Urton

Part III. Early Urban Landscapes:
11. Tiwanaku urban origins: distributed centers and animate landscapes John W. Janusek
12. Mesopotamian cities and urban process, 3500–1600 BCE Geoff Emberling
13. Teotihuacan: an early urban center in its regional context Sarah C. Clayton
14. Urban landscapes: transforming spaces and reshaping communities Geoff Emberling, Sarah C. Clayton and John W. Janusek

Part IV. Early Cities and the Distribution of Power:
15. Ancient South Asian cities in their regions Carla M. Sinopoli
16. Greek cities in the first millennium BCE Ian Morris and Alex R. Knodell
17. Different cities: Jenne-jeno and African urbanism Roderick J. McIntosh
18. The distribution of power: hierarchy and its discontents Carla M. Sinopoli, Roderick J. McIntosh, Ian Morris and Alex R. Knodell

Part V. Early Cities as Creations:
19. Baghdad, an imperial foundation (CE 762–836) Françoise Micheau
20. Jerusalem: capital city created in stone and in imagination Ann E. Killebrew
21. City of earth and wood: New Cahokia and its material-historical implications Timothy Pauketat, Susan M. Alt and Jeffery D. Kruchten
22. Imagined cities Timothy R. Pauketat, Ann E. Killebrew and Françoise Micheau

Part VI. Early Imperial Cities:
23. Neo-Assyrian capital cities: from imperial headquarters to cosmopolitan cities Adelheid Otto
24. Mexico-Tenochtitlan: origin and transformations of the last Mesoamerican imperial city Gerardo Gutiérrez
25. The archetypal imperial city: the rise of Rome and the burdens of empire Nicola Terrenato
26. Imperial cities Nicola Terrenato, Gerardo Gutierrez and Adelheid Otto
27. Conclusion: early cities and the evolution of history: the meaning of early cities Norman Yoffee

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Biography

Norman Yoffee is author of Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations (Cambridge University Press, 2005); Professor Emeritus, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Anthropology, University of Michigan; Senior Fellow, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. He has taught at the University of Arizona, the University of Sydney, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Oxford, and the Free University of Berlin. He is the author or editor of 13 books, over 100 articles and reviews, and more than 200 invited lectures in 33 US universities and in 22 foreign countries. He holds an honorary degree (Doctor of Letters) from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He is also Editor of the Cambridge World Archaeology series (28 volumes).


Contributors:
- Norman Yoffee
- Nicola Terrenato
- John Baines
- Stephen Houston
- Thomas G. Garrison
- Miriam Stark
- Hans Nissen
- Wang Haicheng
- Danny Law
- Gary Urton
- John W. Janusek
- Geoff Emberling
- Sarah C. Clayton
- Carla M. Sinopoli
- Ian Morris
- Alex R. Knodell
- Roderick J. McIntosh
- Françoise Micheau
- Ann E. Killebrew
- Timothy Pauketat
- Susan M. Alt
- Jeffery D. Kruchten
- Timothy R. Pauketat
- Adelheid Otto
- Gerardo Gutiérrez