The Cambridge World History
The Cambridge World History
£35.00
GBPFrom 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.
- Presents the most recent research and latest information on many of the world's earliest and ancient cities
- Offers a global perspective that includes early cities in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Mesoamerica and South America
- Provides comparative studies, discussing information technology, cities as arenas of performance and imperial cities
Product details
November 2017Paperback
9781108407694
592 pages
225 × 144 × 28 mm
0.89kg
76 b/w illus. 38 maps 13 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- 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.
