Journal of Urban Archaeology

As researchers deliberate over the Anthropocene, archaeologists are producing empirical evidence that pushes the reality of a humanly crafted biosphere ever deeper into the Holocene and possibly beyond. By grappling with the signature and consequence of the human footprint over the longue durée, we can appreciate how human sociality transformed in relation to increasingly domesticated and peopled landscapes, particularly in regard to large-scale settlements. Archaeologists are increasingly able to discern the underpinnings of cultural practices and social experimentation that are customarily linked to more recent, complex societies. Whereas traditional anthropological theories suggested unilinear, stepwise, or standardized models and developmental sequences for social complexity and attendant settlement patterns, recent decades of archaeological investigations globally allow us to better recognize a plurality and diversity inherent in the human past.

The late Neolithic site of Shijiahe in the middle Yangtze River Valley of China is important for understanding variation in the development of urbanism in China. Here, a core sector developed that was centred on the walled Shijiahe locus, c. 180 ha in size, and surrounded by a moat. Our paper is the first English publication synthesizing decades of scholarship about Shijiahe and explaining its significance for the development of urbanism. The available data reveal characteristics of urbanism not known elsewhere in China. We discuss possible ritual and economic strategies for increasing socio-political integration among the dispersed clusters of settlement. We also discuss evidence for methods of transportation and communication between different settlement loci.

Situated in present-day Vietnam’s Red River Valley, the settlement known as Co Loa constitutes an early form of city and urbanism in South-East Asia. Given its unprecedented scale and forms of monumentality, Co Loa stands as an anomaly for the greater region during the first millennium bc. This paper presents available material data to highlight the factors and conditions that contributed to its emergence as a major settlement during the region’s late prehistoric period, and considers how the case can contribute to the theoretical literature concerning long-term trajectories of settlement change in the region.

Scale is an essential conceptual tool for studying urban systems, but what categories of scale are relevant to understanding ancient Yorùbá urbanism? This article answers this question by identifying complexity, multiplexity, and referentiality as the most important categories of scale necessary for understanding the ontology, cultural processes, and historical foundations of Yorùbá towns and cities. Focusing on classic Ilé-Ifẹ̀ ad 1000-1400, the article examines (1) the emergent and self-organizing qualities of this early Yorùbá city as a system of community building (complexity); (2) the interrelationships among the different domains/nodes of material and social lives that shaped how this urban phenomenon was experienced and organized (multiplexity); and (3) the values that transformed the city into a reference point for a larger network of communities across the West African region (referentiality).

Great Zimbabwe (ad 1100-1700) was a substantial settlement comprising elite residences and non-elite housing, largely characterized by complexes of massive stone-walled structures. Its growth had an impact on energy resources within its immediate and broader environment, with water playing a key role in the development and persistence of the settlement. The settlement layout that extends beyond the monumental structures comprises water reservoirs and perimeter walls, which for several centuries sustained a substantial population living beyond the core urban area. This article sheds light on the ‘conundrum’ of Great Zimbabwe’s massive stone-built structures. A reconsideration of the functioning of Great Zimbabwe informs the conundrum, which is relevant to contemporary discussion on urban design, architecture, energy saving, and environmental sustainability.

The Trypillia mega-sites (‘TMS’) form an exceptional aspect of the broader Cucuteni–Trypillia group in the Balkan and East European Neolithic and Chalcolithic. The TMS are currently the largest sites and the earliest urban complexes in Eurasia in the fourth millennium cal. bc. In this article, we chart the trajectories of theoretical and methodological development of TMS research. We build on the social implications of the Visibility Graph Analysis of Nebelivka and Bayesian modelling of three significant TMS. In the key section, we examine TMS in the light of three points made in Graeber and Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything: cultural schismogenesis, the three elementary forms of freedom, and those of domination. The integration of the latest analytical results and political theory provides a new platform for future investigations of TMS.

Whilst Stonehenge cannot be considered urban, this famous stone circle was part of a much larger complex which included not only other monuments and significant topographic features but also extensive areas of late Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement during 2500-2200 bc. The unusually large settlement at Durrington Walls, less than 3 km to the east of Stonehenge, appears to have been occupied primarily seasonally and by people who brought their livestock from many different parts of Britain. With the arrival of Beaker-users, the settlement focus shifted to the west of Stonehenge. There is growing evidence that the Stonehenge complex was not a central place but a ‘peripheral place’, located on what may have been a long-term cultural boundary within southern Britain.

The Late Iron Age (second century bc to first century ad) agglomerations in Europe known as oppida have long defied easy categorization leading them to be described using various terms, such as proto-urban, rurban, and polyfocal. Despite the diversity of oppida many share characteristics, including large open spaces and low-density settlement, which appear similar to a range of other social centres from around the world which also struggle to fit conventional definitions of urbanism. Despite this, discussion of the relevance of such comparison remains limited. Through assessment of the two best investigated oppida in Europe (Bibracte, France and Manching, Germany) we explore the nature of the oppida phenomenon, the commonalities they share, and how these compare with agglomerations elsewhere in the world.

The monumental complex of Sechín Alto in the Casma Valley of the north coast of Peru represents one of the earliest complex societies in the Americas. Carbon dates indicate that Sechín Alto began at the end of the third millennium bc, reached its architectural height in the middle of the second, and lasted for several more centuries. The massive platform mound at Sechín Alto measured approximately 250 × 300 m and stood 35 m high. Several other contemporary sites located within 1 km of Sechín Alto combined with other mounds, plazas, performance spaces, and monuments that spread over an area of several square kilometres. This article reviews the architecture, economy, and ritual practices of the Sechín Alto complex during its rise and apogee in the middle of the second millennium.

Chaco Canyon’s concentration of monumental architecture and the replication of its great house/small house architectural distinction throughout a broad region has often been regarded as unique and one of the world’s archaeological ‘Anomalous Giants’. Rather than seeing Chaco as unique, this contribution argues that Chaco should be seen in light of (1) its early position as a frontier zone of households with diverse backgrounds that periodically used the canyon and its surrounding areas; (2) continued mobility of individuals and households engaging in collective large-scale construction, alliance building, and population redistribution in a semi-arid environment; (3) collective governance; and (4) low-density urbanism. Taking a historical approach to Chaco’s trajectory, recent research is marshalled to show when and how each of these models adds complexity to current interpretations that contrasts with typological ascriptions of Chaco society.

The word ‘urban’ is now commonly used to characterize the unusual, amorphous, and sprawling three-part complex of monuments, water features, and pole-and-thatch buildings known as Cahokia. Besides its tripartite spatiality, Cahokia was anomalous in other ways. It arose rapidly, was built in a watery landscape, and was a relatively short-term phenomenon. To understand these anomalous qualities, we focus on three archaeologically isolatable, short-term episodes of Cahokian history (ad 1050, 1125 ± 25, and 1200) and review the development of both central precincts and rural localities. We suggest that Cahokia’s vitality was a function of its region-wide incorporation of other-than-human powers, especially as related to water, while its diminution was at least partly a function of the general absence of urban infrastructure, especially as related to water.

The ten Anomalous Giants discussed in this issue are a few examples of a diverse, worldwide, settlement phenomenon. More than two hundred sites with their characteristic, extensive, patchy or dispersed, low-occupation-density behaviour have been identified across five continents and sixty cultures. Many more may exist, especially in the Americas, Africa, and possibly South Asia. Their global distribution, their recurrence over some seven thousand years across differing environments, the variability of their durations, population mobility behaviours, and a curious absence of some material and organizational properties to manage large populations, demonstrate their diversity and distinctiveness. Regionally, they are giant versions of local settlement traditions. On a global scale they appear to have developed in conjunction with regional population increase and ceased when large compact settlements began to develop in their regions.