Latest Blog Posts for Wide Urban World

• Ramses II vs. Pericles, or Darth Vader vs. the Rebel Alliance
  on Dec 5, 2016 in Collective action Political regimes
  I still struggle to fight off the stereotypes about ancient states and empires that I learned as a student. Anthropological archaeology has long been concerned with the rise of state societies, and the nature of states in the ancient world. This is w...
• My journey in settlement scaling
  on Aug 9, 2016 in Ancient cities Population Scaling
  I am posting today from beautiful Santa Fe, NM. I am here to attend a meeting of our working group on settlement scaling in the ancient world. Our article on scaling at Inka sites was accepted by the Journal of Archaeological Science, and it was post...
• How do neighborhoods form?
  on Jul 4, 2016 in Burning Man Camps City as a practical machine Comparative urbanism Neighborhoods Semi-urban places
  Neighborhood organization is one of the few universals of urban structure. All cities, past and present, all over the world, are organized into neighborhoods. Sometimes neighborhoods are planned from the start by officials or commercial builders. Thi...
• Why we need to disentangle the concepts of city and state in the ancient world
  on Jun 26, 2016 in Cities and states Generative processes State formation
  Many people will be puzzled by this title. The city and the state are separate concepts that refer to very different things. Why would they need to be "disentangled"? But in my own home discipline—anthropological archaeology—these two concepts ha...
• Settlement Scaling and Social Science Theory
  on Mar 24, 2016 in Communities Scaling Theory
  In this post I explore several branches of social science theory that support the social reactor model of settlement scaling. This is a continuation of my prior post, which explored the basis for comparing urban and village settlement systems. Like t...
• Settlement Scaling: Continuities from Villages to Cities
  on Mar 19, 2016 in Deep history Population Rural and Urban Scaling
  I used to make a big deal about definitions of urbanism, and how to distinguish cities from other settlements. This is a worthwhile effort, useful for many purposes. But I now find that overemphasizing the distinction between, say, villages and citie...
• Cities as social reactors
  on Feb 22, 2016 in Scaling Social reactors Urban universals
  Fig 1. Inka storehousesSome traits of cities seem universal, shared by all cities, large and small, past and present. Neighborhood organization is one of these urban universals, something I have talked about in previous posts (here, and here, for exa...
• Viking houses in Aarhus, Denmark
  on Jan 20, 2016 in Households Housing Urban archaeology Vikings
  Model of early Viking ArosI am in Aarhus, Denmark for a 3-day conference on early cities. Papers are focusing on cities and methods for studying cities, particularly for the Viking era, Medieval Europe, the late Near East, and the East African coast.
• The original status symbols of Teotihuacan
  on Dec 17, 2015 in Housing Status Teotihuacan
  Fig. 1. Almenas decorating the roof of the Bird-butterfly palaceThis photo of the "Bird-butterfly palace" at Teotihuacan (fig. 1) shows some of the roof ornaments that decorated the building in ancient times. These objects are called "almenas." They...
• Unsung heroes in the distant past
  on Dec 9, 2015 in Aztecs Communities Households Peasants Unsung heroes
  unsung hero (n) : one who created positive change in history by improving the lives of others, and has yet to be recognized for his or her actions. I have been wondering lately whether the phrase "unsung...

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