Aproto-city is a large, denseNeolithic settlement that is largely distinguished from acity by its lack ofplanning andcentralized rule.[1] The termmega-sites is also used. While the precise classification of many sites considered proto-cities is ambiguous and subject to considerable debate,[2] common examples include sites of thePre-Pottery Neolithic B culture and following cultures in theFertile Crescent such asJericho andÇatalhöyük, sites of theCucuteni-Trypillia culture in Southeast Europe, and of theUbaid period inMesopotamia.[3][4] These sites pre-date the Mesopotamian city-states of theUruk period that mark the development of the first indisputable urban settlements, with the emergence of cities such asUruk at the end of the Fourth Millennium, B.C.[5]
The emergence of cities from proto-urban settlements is a non-linear development that demonstrates the varied experiences of earlyurbanization. Whilst the proto-urban sites of the Ubaid period in northern Mesopotamia anticipate the social and political developments of the firstSumerian cities, many proto-cities show little correlation with later urban settlements.[5][6] The development of cities and proto-cities and the transition away fromhunting and gathering towardagriculture is known as theNeolithic Revolution.
The label of a proto-city is applied to Neolithic mega-sites that are large and population-dense for their time but lack most other characteristics that are found in later urban settlements such as those of theMesopotamian city-states in the 4th Millennium B.C.[3] These later urban sites are commonly distinguished by a dense,stratified population alongside a level of organisation that facilitated the building of public works, the redistribution of food surpluses and raids into surrounding areas.[1] In contrast, proto-urban sites such as Çatalhöyük are population dense but lack clear signs of central control and social stratification, such as largepublic works.[6]
Pre-Pottery Neolithic AJericho was the site of a large settlement with a dense population as early as the Ninth Millennium BC, with estimates of the settlement's population ranging from 2000-3000 to only 200-300.[7] Its proximity to fresh water from thespring atAin es-Sultan facilitated the early development ofanimal husbandry andagriculture, making the site among the most advanced centres of theNeolithic Revolution in theFertile Crescent.[8]
The settlement was built over an area of 2 or 3 ha, and its most notable features includestone walls 3m wide and 4m tall, as well as the oldest known monumental building, theTower of Jericho: a large stone tower 8m high and builtc. 8000 BC[9][7][10] The Tower required substantial communal effort to build, with an estimated 10,400 working days invested in the construction of the tower.[10] It may have functioned as part of a fortification system, a flood-detection system, or as a symbolic monument to “motivate people to take part in a communal lifestyle”.[11][12] The Tower may also have been an indication of power struggles within the community, as an individual or a group may have “exploited the primeval fears of the residents and persuaded them to build it”.[12] There is also evidence of human violence at the site, as the skeletons of twelve people apparently killed in a fight or riot have been found within the tower. Thus, despite new technologies in domestication, agriculture and architecture, social organisation was still a decisive factor in the success of the settlement.[8] In 6000 B.C., a majorearthquake shifted or interrupted the Spring of Ain es-Sultan, likely causing the end of Neolithic Jericho.[9]
Çatalhöyük is a mega-site of the Neolithic in SouthernAnatolia that was inhabited from 7100-6000 B.C., and had a population of up to 8000 people in a site measuring 34 acres.[13] The site consists of sequences ofmudbrick buildings built atop one another and separated by spaces formiddens and livestock. Rather than showing signs of deliberate planning, Çatalhöyük displays an “organic modular development through the repetition of similar units (buildings)".[2] Individual houses were largely self-sufficient in function, lacking specialisation. For example, there were no assigned builders of houses, and the bricks used to build them differed in composition and shape.[14] There is some evidence of long-distance trade, with possible value-added production occurring with imports of obsidian fromCappadocia, 170 km away.[14] The site has little evidence of significant social stratification or centralised authority, yet the complex culture and longevity of the settlement suggests different methods of achieving social cohesion.[6][2]
TheCucuteni-Trypillia culture (4100-3400 B.C.) is notable for creating the largest settlements in south-eastern Europe during theNeolithic-Eneolithic that range between 100 and 340 ha. Owing to their size, the mega-sites created by the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture is classified by some as proto-cities.[15]
The Cucuteni-Trypillian site ofNebelivka in Ukraine features approximately 1500 structures organised into two concentric circles with inner streets that separate the settlement into 14 quarters and over 140 neighbourhoods. Despite this layout suggesting planning from a central authority, individual neighbourhoods feature a high degree of variability, and the site is undistinguishable from preceding or contemporary settlements in terms ofeconomy andtrade.[16] Social tensions and population pressures resulting from the dense settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture may have instead been resolved by constant migration as opposed to the development of new social and political institutions in a sedentary population. It is thus ambiguous if the sites of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture represent an urbanisation process.[15]
The development of cities from proto-urban sites was not a linear progression in most cases. Rather, proto-cities are defined as "early experiments" in high-density living that "did not develop further",[3] particularly in their level of population,[17]suggesting a more flexible and complex trajectory to urbanisation.[3][18]
Alternatively, a number of proto-urban population centres such asTell Brak in Northern Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium B.C. can be considered "successful experiments" that adopted new social and political institutions to mitigate internal conflicts.[6] These sites anticipate the administrative practices of Southern Mesopotamian city-states such asUruk, such as the use of seals to denote ownership or control. At Tell Brak, a stamp sealing with a motif of alion suggests the authority of a senior official; in later periods Mesopotamians considered the lion a symbol of kingship.[5]
By the end of the fourth millennium B.C., the emergence of the city of Uruk in Southern Mesopotamia reflected the social, cultural and political developments of proto-cities in the region during prior centuries. The city can be viewed as “the culmination of a series of increasingly successful experiments in settlement nucleation”.[3] Extremely large in scale (250 ha, twice the size of Tell Brak), Uruk was a centre of religious and political power, with large, well-decorated households and temples indicating a political and religious elite. As the most prominent of the early Mesopotamian cities, Uruk has yielded the earliestwritten documents (c. 3300 BC) and also the largest area of public buildings from the fourth millennium B.C., making it among the most significant of the early settlements that archeologists classify as cities.[3][20]
The rise of urban settlements such as Uruk is often attributed to a "revolution" insocial relations where - among other factors - the complexdivision of labour and the production of anagricultural surplus resulted in the development ofsocial classes and ultimately, thecentralisation of power around key institutions such as a ruler or other elements of government.[3][21] In the first cities and states, this shifted societal relations from being based onkinship to being based on residence or class.[3] Monumental architecture - attributed to the state - served as a symbol of political power, and may have also served to bind commoners emotionally to their city and to their ruler through the act ofconstruction.[19] As opposed to the popular view of the use ofslave labour to construct ancient monuments, much of the labour was provided by free commoners as part of theirtax requirements.[19]
An alternative explanation of the urbanisation process suggests that changes in social relations may not have been as revolutionary in the earliest cities, where kinship may not have been replaced, but rather redefined to incorporate entire settlements and cities.[3][22] The temples and palaces of the Mesopotamian city-states were run like households, using household terminologies such as "father", "son" and "servant".[22] Houses in the village settlements of the fifth millennium B.C.Ubaid Period in Mesopotamia shared the same layout with temples both in the proto-urban settlement at Tell Brak and in the city of Uruk in the fourth millennium B.C; a common resident of Uruk would still be able to recognise a temple as a house, albeit different in scale and grandeur.[3] Thus, through the course of the fourth millennium B.C., households might have been replaced not by the state, but rather by a metaphorical household that spanned an entire city rather than just an immediate family.[3][22] The formation of the first cities may have been somewhat accidental if ambitious household heads trying to expand their social connections unintentionally grew their settlement by attracting new followers, even if they originally aimed to sustain and expand their own household.[3]
The precise definition of what constitutes a proto-urban, urban or rural settlement has been a source of ambiguity and debate. As noted byV. Gordon Childe, “The concept of ‘city’ is notoriously hard to define”.[21] Childe’s 1950 concept of the“Urban Revolution” remains the prevailing framework for understanding the origins of cities, and lists ten criteria which differentiate Neolithic villages from the first “proper” cities.[16][2][14] Among other features, the most enduring of Childe’s criteria include: a large and dense settlement population, the specialisation of labour, the concentration of an agricultural surplus by a centralised authority, the creation of social classes, and the centralisation of political power away from families and households.[19]
Many of Childe’s criteria are still widely recognised as key milestones in the development of early complex societies, and his basic model can still be discerned within most modern accounts of the development of the earliest cities.[19] More modern archaeological studies discuss the “origin of states”, “primary state formation” or “archaic states” as opposed to any “Urban Revolution”, and it is noted that “Childe's concept of the Urban Revolution was about the transition to complex, state level societies, and not primarily about urbanism or cities per se”.[19]
Childe's enduring influence in defining urban settlements has been frequently called into question, as his description features “nothing about the form or aesthetics of the City, or any particular city”,[19] rather, it “combined urbanism and the state in a single sequence and permitted the uncritical evaluation of this particular association”.[14] Another criticism of the Childean approach has been its reliance on a Eurocentric framework with questionable validity on a global scale, ignoring site and cultural-specific details and ultimately constituting a “check-list approach”.[16] Alternative, more flexible methods of differentiating a city from other types of sites have been less effective at differentiating between different site types, such as between urban, proto-urban or pre-urban. Thus, the precise classification of early urban phenomena is often ambiguous and subject to debate.[2]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)They appear to have been experiments with nucleated settlement, but experiments that did not develop further, especially in the realm of population [...].
Neolithic megasites, such as Çatalhöyük, have been variously defined as 'severe anomalies' (Fletcher, 1995. p. 189) or 'dead ends' (Ben-Shlomo and Garfinkel, 2009. p. 203) on the way to true urbanity; alternatively, they have been viewed as proto-urban sites or 'proto-cities': early 'experiments' with social nucleation that didn't continue any further (Ur, 2017. p. 140). Instead, these settlements and finds seem to point to a much more flexible and complex scenario of multiple trajectories and experiences that can be hardly restricted within linear and univocal narratives and that suggest the need for a focused contextual approach and a bottom-up perspective that rather of trying to restrict the different settlement forms and practices within normative categories is concerned with the way these sites were internally organized, on which socio-material practices formed their fabric and how they changed through time and space (Hodder, 2005; Asouti, 2006; Düring, 2007a,b, 2013; Wengrow, 2015; Mazzucato, 2016; Der and Issavi, 2017).
For many years, the southern Mesopotamia of Ur and Uruk, ancient Sumer, has been seen as the origin centre of civilisation and cities [...]. But at Tell Brak Joan Oates and her team are turning this model upside down.