Cities and Villages in Archaeology

Wintersemester 2023 / 2024 Cities and Villages in Archaeology

In archaeology, we often describe settlement sites as ‘cities’ or ‘villages’. However, we only rarely explain what we mean or what were the characteristics of the site which led us to its identification. When we do provide such definitions, we identify cities based on their principal layout (e.g. very big, having a gridiron) and physical characteristics (e.g. fortified, having a church) or on their assumed function (e.g. central for trade, the Sit of the Bishop). In landscape archaeology, scholars employ mathematical models and the Central Place theory to illustrate the regional centrality of sites and possible urbanization processes. Archaeological sites which yield no such characteristics are often identified as non-cities or ‘rural’. However, historians and sociologists agree that the ‘city’ is a relative concept, changing in various contexts and through different perspectives. Attempts to generalize cities under empirical criteria such as size, growth rate, density, or long-term continuity usually fail to include all assumed cases. Archaeology also shows that not every economic hub correlates with what we imagine to be a city.

In this seminar we will deal with archaeology, history, and modern geography. We will discuss the imagination of an ideal city in different historical and modern cultures as well as the terminology (or wording) for settlement units. Mostly, we will deal with the archaeological problem of site definition (and ‘off-site’) and think of possible solutions.