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- Title
Extraordinary Cities: Early 'City-ness' and the Origins of Agriculture and States.
- Authors
TAYLOR, PETER J.
- 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.
- Subjects
CATAL Mound (Turkey); MESOPOTAMIA; URBAN growth; JACOBS, Jane, 1916-2006; URBAN communication; AGRICULTURE &; civilization; STATE formation
- Publication
International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, 2012, Vol 36, Issue 3, p415
- ISSN
0309-1317
- Publication type
Case Study
- DOI
10.1111/j.1468-2427.2011.01101.x