The Cambridge World History: Volume 3

Cambridge University Press, 3/12/2015
EAN 9780521190084, ISBN10: 0521190088

Hardcover, 595 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 3.2 cm
Language: English

From the fourth millennium BCE to the early second millennium CE the world became a world of cities. This volume explores this critical transformation, from the appearance of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the rise of cities in Asia and the Mediterranean world, Africa, and the Americas. Through case studies and comparative accounts of key cities across the world, leading scholars chart the ways in which these cities grew as nodal points of pilgrimages and ceremonies, exchange, storage and redistribution, and centres for defence and warfare. They show how in these cities, along with their associated and restructured countrysides, new rituals and ceremonies connected leaders with citizens and the gods, new identities as citizens were created, and new forms of power and sovereignty emerged. They also examine how this unprecedented concentration of people led to disease, violence, slavery and subjugations of unprecedented kinds and scales.

1. Introduction
a history of the study of early cities Norman Yoffee and Nicola Terrenato
Part I. Early Cities as Arenas of Performance
2. Ancient Egyptian cities
monumentality and performance John Baines
3. The dedicated city
meaning and morphology in classic Maya urbanism Stephen Houston and Thomas G. Garrison
4. Southeast Asian urbanism
from early city to classical state Miriam Stark
5. Cities as performance John Baines, Miriam Stark, Thomas G. Garrison and Stephen Houston
Part II. Early Cities and Information Technologies
6. Urbanization and techniques of communication
the case of the rise of the southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk during the fourth millennium BCE Hans Nissen
7. Writing and the city in early China Wang Haicheng
8. Reading early Maya cities
interpreting the role of writing in urbanization Danny Law
9. Inka administration in Tawantinsuyu by means of the knotted-cords Gary Urton
10. Writing and record-keeping in early cities Danny Law, Wang Haicheng, Hans Nissen and Gary Urton
Part III. Early Urban Landscapes
11. Tiwanaku urban origins
distributed centers and animate landscapes John W. Janusek
12. Mesopotamian cities and urban process, 3500–1600 BCE Geoff Emberling
13. Teotihuacan
an early urban center in its regional context Sarah C. Clayton
14. Urban landscapes
transforming spaces and reshaping communities Geoff Emberling, Sarah C. Clayton and John W. Janusek
Part IV. Early Cities and the Distribution of Power
15. Ancient South Asian cities in their regions Carla M. Sinopoli
16. Greek cities in the first millennium BCE Ian Morris and Alex R. Knodell
17. Different cities
Jenne-jeno and African urbanism Roderick J. McIntosh
18. The distribution of power
hierarchy and its discontents Carla M. Sinopoli, Roderick J. McIntosh, Ian Morris and Alex R. Knodell
Part V. Early Cities as Creations
19. Baghdad, an imperial foundation (CE 762–836) Françoise Micheau
20. Jerusalem
capital city created in stone and in imagination Ann E. Killebrew
21. City of earth and wood
New Cahokia and its material-historical implications Timothy Pauketat, Susan M. Alt and Jeffery D. Kruchten
22. Imagined cities Timothy R. Pauketat, Ann E. Killebrew and Françoise Micheau
Part VI. Early Imperial Cities
23. Neo-Assyrian capital cities
from imperial headquarters to cosmopolitan cities Adelheid Otto
24. Mexico-Tenochtitlan
origin and transformations of the last Mesoamerican imperial city Gerardo Gutiérrez
25. The archetypal imperial city
the rise of Rome and the burdens of empire Nicola Terrenato
26. Imperial cities Nicola Terrenato, Gerardo Gutiérrez and Adelheid Otto
27. Conclusion
early cities and the evolution of history
the meaning of early cities Norman Yoffee.