Extraordinary Cities: early ‘City-ness’ and the origins of agriculture and states

Peter Taylor

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

40 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

I explore the ramifications of applying some recent research on cities, built on the work of Jane Jacobs, to early city development. A communications approach to ‘city ness’ is offered as a way of understanding early cities as qualitatively new social worlds enabling world-changing processes. Returning to Jacobs’ use of Çatalhöyük to push back the timing of the first cities, I review recent work on the site to support her thesis. In the process I also argue in favour of her controversial thesis of cities inventing agriculture using Sahlin’s ‘stone age economics’. Further, and going beyond Jacobs, I argue that states were also invented in cities and harness evidence for this in Mesopotamian studies. In both cases I provide generic conclusions that briefly indicate examples from other parts of the world.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)415-447
JournalInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research
Volume36
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2012

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