Francesca Fulminante- 1Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Bristol University, Bristol, United Kingdom
- 2Division of Humanities, University Roma Tre, Rome, Italy
Editorial on the Research Topic
Where Do Cities Come From and Where Are They Going To? Modelling Past and Present Agglomerations to Understand Urban Ways of Life
Urbanism in the past and present remains hotly debated in academia and the media. We can think of a series of successfully conducted projects in the last few years: for example, the Copenhagen Polis Centre project; the Reception of the City in Late Antiquity ERC project (Cambridge, UK); the ongoing UrbNet project (Aharus, Denmark); the Social Reactors Project (Colorado USA). To these now the Dutch Universities OIKOS network can also be added, and if this was not enough the Guardian has recently launched a series “Guardian Cities” in the UK media. Yet fundamental questions such as “What is an ancient city? when can we say that a nucleated settlement has become a city? Why sometime a city prevails over others and why eventually it declines?”; are still widely open and lively debated question, that have not received a definitive answer yet especially with reference to central Italy, and Rome in particular.
The long-term trajectory of Rome is quite well-known and established from the early supremacy within Latium vetus in pre-historic and early historic times, to the emerging power in Italy, during the Republican period, and finally the dominance over the Empire, in the first few centuries of our Era before the final collapse around the end of the fourth century AD. However, the contributory factors and the determinants of this trajectory, which took “a slightly shabby Iron Age village” to become the “undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean” are still very much questioned1. In this editorial I will discuss features of urbanism/urbanization by presenting the current debate on the ancient city, also with reference to the recent Cambridge University Press book by Arjan Zuiderhoek2, which summarizes and discusses extensively previous approaches. Then I will discuss the contribution of this special Research Topic and I will indicate further possible points of debate.
Already in the Bronze Age, but more commonly with the advent of the Iron Age, in the Near East, in Europe but also in the Americas, many regions become organized in small independent political units, generally defined as city-states3. Since the classic work by Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité Antique, published in 18644, the debate on the characteristics and the origin of the ancient city has been immense, but the scholarly and at the same time agile book by Zuiderhoek, help us navigate into this dense and intricated subject5. On one hand, Zuiderhoek discusses classical models of the ancient city, such as those elaborated by:
1) Fustel de Coulanges6: based on a primordial, Indo-European notion of private property, originated in claims of land control and household possession through the cult of ancestors 7;
2) Max Weber8: contrasting the modern-medieval city economy to the ancient household economy9;
3) Moses Finley10: conceptualizes the ancient city as a consumer city (greatly influenced by Max Weber) to explain the ancient world's relative economic underdevelopment, in comparison with medieval and early modern Europe.
As observed by Zuiderhoek, in stressing the contrast with antiquity, all these three famous and influential models were interested in emphasizing the exceptionalism of Western European medieval cities, from which the unique development toward capitalism, the Industrial Revolution and modern liberal society would have emerged11.
Besides these fundamental and influential models of the ancient city Zuiderhoek discussed all major models of urbanism developed by past and current scholarship, that can be summarized and integrated with further discussion as follow:
1. The demographic model can be based either on settlement size, with urban setting recognized above the threshold of 10,000 individuals or in the case of ancient cities, 5,00012; the density/nucleation principle, according to which “cities are places where a certain energized crowding of people takes place”13); or the demographic composition of the population with the alternative models of the “graveyard,” in which high urban mortality rates due to dirty and overcrowded environments, especially among infant/children, require immigration to explain urban growth) 14 and “demographic transition” model, according to which higher fertility rates, led by early cessation of breastfeeding, could overweight high urban mortality rates, allowing for population survival and reproduction and eventually the demographic and economic growth15.
2. More classic, the socio-economic model, characterizes urbanism by specialization of labor, social stratification and complementarity between the consumer city and the producing countryside, that is the market economy16.
3. The model of urban environment and/or urban Landscape, based on the appearance of the ancient city, “with the presence of central squares or plazas, paved streets, defensive walls and gates, public architecture for religious, political or ceremonial/ entertainment purposes and some element of town planning. It is perhaps in this sphere that the intuitive understanding of a settlement as ‘urban' (we know it when we see it) is strongest”17.
4. The political model, according to which “Greek and Roman cities were political communities, which possessed the institutions required for autonomous collective decision-making”18.
5. The ritual and identity model according to which cities were communities not only for full members of the political body (civitas) but a wider group of people, including women, children, freedmen, resident foreigners and slaves, that were effectively non or semi-citizens but would find unity and interactions in the comprehensive and inclusive action of the city rituals and festivals19. While religion has often been connected to power as a mean of coercion and ideological control (Religio Instrumentum Regni), from ancient classical authors20 to Niccoló Macchiavelli's treatise21, Jorg Rüpke is developing a new dynamic way of looking at religion as a mean of actively creating power and the changes that led to early states societies22.
To these models identified by Zuiderhoek, now has also to be added the “house society” model, originally developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and since elaborated on by numerous scholars, also with reference to Mediterranean Bronze and Iron Age societies23 and to Central Italy24, in particular. This model emphasizes the role of the family as an institution, with related anthropological and social practices such as marriages, hereditary rights etc. and seems to offer the missing link between egalitarian pre-urban societies and stratified and hierarchical urban developments, also being a key factor, in a dialectic manner, for the creation of state institutions. This view, reminiscent of Karl Marx and Friederich Engels perspectives25, had already been suggested by Renato Peroni26 and Andrea Cardarelli27, in their elaboration and definition of proto-urban societies and seems most promising.
Zuiderhoek's book, these discussions and the rich literature of comparative studies on urbanism28 demonstrate that while the debate on what is an ancient city is still very much open and far from being resolved, it is still possible to identify some common traits and or common trajectories that characterize settlements and communities across a great variety of historical and/or chronological settings. However, much of the discussion of these themes, within historical and archaeological circles, has been on a discursive or qualitative level, therefore it is often difficult to harmonize the different models that have been applied to date into a consistent empirical and/or theoretical framework. A new approach to settlements throughout different contexts should now be within our grasp, however, thanks to both the ease with which information can be disseminated and the facilities that recent developments in IT offer us to model, analyse, and statistically test data. As suggested by Monica Smith “the capacities for human interaction in concentrated locations are exercised within a limited set of parameters”29, that should be possible to study quantitatively. Zuiderhoek seems to be skeptical about these interdisciplinary and quantitative comparative approaches to urbanism and urbanization that “may eventually be able to arrive at some universal understanding of urbanism”30. Differently I believe that qualitative discussion and comparative quantitative approaches are not alternative but complementary and it is still possible to keep details about cultural-historical specificity within wider comparative perspectives. In this sense Zuiderhoek underestimates a whole tradition of studies from the pioneering work by Louis Wirth31 to the more recent contributions by Michael Batty32, both discussed and presented in the recent quantitative approach to Central European urbanism by Oliver Nakoinz33.
The quantitative comparative approach presented in this Research Topic, allows us to connect recent developments in archaeological research with those in other disciplines, including economics, anthropology, sociology, and social ecology, not only enabling us to add historical depth to our models of urbanism, but also to connect understanding about cities in the past and present, offering opportunities to predict their evolution and improve policies in the future. Probably given my personal background and expertise, the collection is slightly biased toward Mediterranean cultures and classical civilizations, with a special focus on Italy, but probably this is not totally a bad thing since classical civilizations lay at the origin of Western culture, therefore understanding them better is also understanding ourselves a bit better, as long as we are aware of this potential bias and perspective.
Chapman et al., examines a particular form of early urbanism, in 4th millennium BC Ukraine, the so-called Trypillia Megasites, the largest known settlements of that time in Europe and possibly in the world. These sites are often viewed as failed experiments on the path to proper urbanism or proto-urban sites, and reveal few signs of hierarchical social stratification despite their large size; as such, they represent a challenge for the understanding of early processes of community formation and social integration. Chapman et al. consider inter-sites exchange and interaction and observes how Tryphillia Megasites' subsistence stresses begin when site size exceeded the critical size of 35 ha. This tends to happen, especially in the passage between phase B1 and C1, when also a particular level of agglomeration and clustering can be noticed, suggesting that some form of buffering involving exchange of goods for food was in operation. In addition, by analyzing the layout and internal organization of these mega-sites, Chapman et al. suggest that they might also considered centers for religious agglomeration and processional rituals, which might be at the origin of their development and growth. This connection between the origin of urbanism and religion is also a novel perspective recently suggested by Jorg Rüpke, that applies very well also to other Mediterranean cultures including early Rome34.
By using a wide range of data and by applying socio-material network analysis (community detection techniques) Mazzucato, in the Neolithic site of Catalhöyük, in Turkey, analyses households as nodes and investigate family and intra-community ties and relations. Here analysis reveal that by the later part of the Neolithic period, the houses network together with a low global density score, accounts for the highest centralization value. This configuration suggests a much less cohesive settlement in this period, where there is an increase of the central role of some buildings, together with a general contraction of material relations, which might indicate a more dispersed and less egalitarian social arrangement.
Households and intra-site analysis is also the focus of Cabaniss's paper, which, by using the case study of Metaponto, introduces to the archaeological literature, the entropy estimating statistical bootstrap (EESB), a tool developed in information theory and computational social science by DeDeo et al. (2013). This tool is important, because provides a way to assess how representative a small dataset is of a parent population, categorized according to some useful typology, and therefore can be used to decide when small datasets can add further detail to our quantitative studies of archaeological settlements or when they need to be rejected as too small. As emphasized by Cabaniss, “this will allow building larger urban datasets that are empirically grounded in the specific evidence for each community, facilitating the work of research programs such as urban scaling.”
Similarly to Mazzucato's paper, The Davis model of community detection has also been used by Donnellan to explore community dynamics at an emerging indigenous urban site in Southern Italy, which showed signs of intense contact both with Etruscan and Greek communities (900-600 BC). By using two-mode model networks between burials and grave goods objects, she calculated different indexes such as network cohesion and centrality measures. Network cohesion showed expanding and contracting, suggesting probably the existence of tension and a tight control of funerary behavior from the community. In addition, the study of centrality of selected nodes suggested that an increase in crop storage has played a significant role in the development of state power and the urbanization process at Pontecagnano.
Stoddart et al. authors combine the use of rank size and indices of centralization at the regional and local level, by examining the large places and the supporting rural settlements, by using survey data from many projects conducted in central Italy since the second half of the nineteenth centuries and especially in the second half of the twentieth century, and recently made available also thanks to innovative open-access digital platforms. This paper examines the power dynamics as indicated by settlement organization in Etruria during the first half of the first Millennium BC and identifies areas of greater centralization and some areas of vacuum of power. The overall picture is similar to my own recent study35, and identifies the main distinction between Etruria and Latium in the difference balance of powers and suggests that an “Etruscan empire” was unlikely because of the specific heterarchical structure of Etruscan communities and settlements organization36.
Nakoinz et al. use a particular type of artifact, fibulae which are a garment of dress and a personal ornament common in Iron Age Mediterranean and Continental Europe societies, to build “middle class” networks among German princely seats and translate Christaller relative centrality into network centrality. By adopting and combining concepts from different tradition of studies, such as urbanity, centrality, interaction, and connectivity, they offer a case studies and develop a methodology that allow to combine social and geographical networks in a novel and promising way37.
Mandich's article investigates the urban expansion and economic development of ancient Rome through the application of models and theories originally designed for the study of contemporary cities. While the growth of ancient settlements is often difficult to track and analyse, archaeologically observable changes in land use can be read and interpreted as a function of broader economic oscillations over the longue durée. In particular, Mandich shows, how specific patterns of urban expansion identified in modern cities also existed in ancient Rome.
Fletcher's paper compares urban settings in different region and chronological settings and defines different types of urbanism according to different density patterns. In particular, he compares modern industrial cities to pre-industrial agrarian societies, and he identifies two different types of low-density: large low-density settlements on a grand scale, in the range of 200–1,000 ha (Greater Angkor, Mayan cities, Tryphillia Megasites etc.) and low density settlements of a lesser scale, between 15 and 20 ha sometime even 80–90 ha (Great Zimbabwe, European oppida etc.). While the first ones seem not to have long-term trajectories, the smaller but well-connected small scale, low-density settlement seems to have longer trajectories and sometime, eventually develop into the industrial modern cities.
A common thread of all these papers seem to be the recognition that ultimately “urbanity” is mainly “connectivity” and probably within the traditional dichotomy between “hierarchy” and “heterarchies”38 lies the clue for the development of “urban” complexity. Translated in other terms, Smith and Lobo argue that the variability among cities, can be in essence reduced to two basic types of urban types: political (most ancient cities) and economic (most modern cities). However, both these types can be reconciled in an ultimate model of spaced urban environment, which again is based on connectivity: cities as settings for “energized crowding.” As Smith and Lobo suggest, processes of interaction generate both economic and political growth, and they ultimately produce and influence the built forms and social characteristics of all cities.
This model may help scholars distinguish the unique from the universal traits of cities today and in the past. In his second paper of this special Research Topic Bettencourt and Lobo, this time with Bettencourt, discuss quantitative comparisons based on a few simple variables across settlements to analyse how different places and peoples dealt with general problems of any society. These include demographic change, the organization of built spaces, the intensity and size of socioeconomic networks and the processes underlying technological change and economic growth. As reminded by Bettencourt and Lobo, the historical record contains a much more varied and more independent set of experiences than contemporary urbanization, it has a unique power for illuminating present puzzles of human development and testing emergent urban theory.
In his paper, Ortman, follows up on this argument. Past developing urban contexts provide a diachronic laboratory to assess different socio-economic factors to determine how and why urban environments came into being, developed, flourished, and eventually collapsed (or not). However, as emphasized by Ortman, often lessons from the past can be hindered by the fact that they remain anchored to a very peculiar and specific chronological and geographical context. By partially going back to the unfulfilled potential of some of the New Archaeology aspirations, and by adopting quantitative comparative perspective, such as settlement scaling theory, we can overcome these limitations, and archaeology could assume a “new kind of relevance” that goes beyond rhetoric declamations. We hope this collection of paper, presenting both case studies and theoretical essays has offered some material and opportunity for discussion in this direction.
Probably what has been left partially implicit in this collection, is the experiences of people who live and work in these urban environments, their well-being which ultimately is also a measure of economic growth: where and how people live, eat, travel, and interact? How does people's life change as communities become increasingly urban? What are the health differences between urban and rural populations and/or people of different social status? But these are questions for another Research Topic.
Author Contributions
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.
Conflict of Interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
This Special Research Topic stemmed from a collaboration and discussion originated at the “Urbanization without Growth in the Ancient World” Conference, held at the British School at Rome, 18th–21st July 2017, and organized by the Social Reactor Project (Colorado). The editorial work is partially supported by this project, and by grants held by Francesca Fulminante at the Institute of Advanced Studies, at Durham (Epiphany Term, 2018) and at Kiel (DfG Visiting Fellowship Michaelmas Term 2018) Publication of the research presented in the papers has been supported by an OPENAIRE funding linked to the Marie Curie Project Past-people-nets (628818), conducted by Francesca Fulminante (2014–2016) and by a grant fromthe James S. McDonnell Foundation (#220020438). I would like to thank the other editors of the Research Topic for organizing such a stimulating conference in Rome a few years ago and for editing and contributing to the Research Topic and the other authors for their great work.
Footnotes
1. ^See for example also the recent synthesis by Beard (2015), reviewed by the Wall Street Journal (quotations in brackets).
2. ^Zuiderhoek (2016). This book and the current debate is illustrated also in more detail in Fulminante (forthcoming).
3. ^See Nichols and Charlton (1997), Hansen (1997; 1998; 2000; 2002), Hansen and Heine Nielsen (2004), and now also Yoffee (2015).
4. ^Fustel de Coulanges (1864).
5. ^Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 1–18; see also Yoffee and Terrenato (2015).
6. ^See above note 4.
7. ^Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 9–10.
8. ^Weber (1921, 1958, 1978).
9. ^Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 11–12.
10. ^Finley (1981, 1999).
11. ^Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 12.
12. ^De Vries (1984), Honenberg and Hollen Lees (1995), Fletcher (1995), Storey (2006), see Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 4–5.
13. ^Kostof (1991), cited by Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 4.
14. ^Wrigley (1967), Sharlin (1978), Cipolla (1994); for a contrasting perspective see now Jedwab et al. (2017).
15. ^Elaborated by McLaren (1978) for Early Industrial London, the model has been used by Haydock et al. (2013) for Roman and Medieval Britain, but could have a much wider applicability, see Fulminante (2015).
16. ^For this model see Weber's and Finley's theories discussed above and further discussion in Zuiderhoek (2016), Chapter 3.
17. ^Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 6 and chapter 4. For a monumental approach to urbanism see Creekmore and Fisher (2014); with particular reference to Rome and Central Italy see Cifani (2008, 2010, 2014, 2018). Also contributions in Thomas and Meyers (2012). With reference to this approach new technological developments such as LIDAR are favoring novel approaches, also within a comparative perspective, based on the complementarity and symbiotic relation between urbanism and anthropogenic landscapes, see e.g., Chase and Chase (2016).
18. ^Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 78 and chapter 5.
19. ^Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 94 and chapter 6.
20. ^e.g., Polybius, Historiae, VI.56 or Titus Livius, Historiae, I.12.
21. ^Macchiavelli (2018) (1531).
22. ^Rüpke (2018) and Urciuoli and Rüpke (2018).
23. ^Gonzalez-Ruibal and Ruiz-Galvez (2016).
24. ^Naglak and Terrenato (2019).
25. ^Engel (1884).
26. ^Peroni (1994, 1996).
27. ^Cardarelli (2011).
28. ^For example, partially already mentioned, Kostof (1991), Nichols and Charlton (1997), Hansen (2000, 2002), Smith (2003), Trigger (2003), Marcus and Sabloff (2008), and Yoffee (2015).
29. ^Smith (2003) quoted by Zuiderhoek (2016), p. 6–7.
30. ^Ibidem.
31. ^Wirth (1938).
32. ^Most importantly Batty (2005).
33. ^Nakoinz (2017).
34. ^Rüpke (2018) and Urciuoli and Rüpke (2018).
35. ^Fulminante (forthcoming).
36. ^See also pioneering observations in this sense already in Guidi (1985).
37. ^On the challenging opportunity of comparing and combining social and geographical networks see also the recent volume by Dawson and Iacono (2020).
38. ^Crumley (1995).
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Keywords: urbanism, Italy, Europe, world archaeology, comparative quantitative perspective
Citation: Fulminante F (2021) Editorial: Where Do Cities Come From and Where Are They Going To? Modelling Past and Present Agglomerations to Understand Urban Ways of Life. Front. Digit. Humanit. 7:633838. doi: 10.3389/fdigh.2020.633838
Received: 26 November 2020; Accepted: 22 December 2020;
Published: 14 January 2021.
Edited and reviewed by: Alessandro Guidi, Roma Tre University, Italy
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*Correspondence: Francesca Fulminante, ZnJhbmNlc2NhLmZ1bG1pbmFudGUmI3gwMDA0MDt1bmlyb21hMy5pdA==