CLCV 6066 ANCIENT CITIES

Urbanism in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean World

Fall 2013 Professor: Ellen Morris Monday 11:00-12:50 Office: Milbank 219b 405 Barnard Hall Office hrs: Thursday 12:30-2:30 or by appt. Email: emorris@barnard.edu Phone: 854-6023 This course explores a wide variety of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cities, as well as the theoretical frameworks that inform the study of their development, growth, and contraction over time. Cities thrive for different reasons; some are grounded on trade and markets, others on sacred centers or military bases, while others are fashioned as if from scratch to fit a particular political ideology. During the course of the semester, as we examine specific ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cities, we will explore questions of city-planning vs. organic growth, the position of the city with respect to its hinterland, the relevance of a city’s political status to its form, as well as structural and/or culturally specific aspects of neighborhoods, ethnic enclaves, slums, markets, industries, temples, palaces, memorials, and arenas for showcasing political, sacred, and spectacular performance. In urban environments, peoples of different ethnicities, social statuses, and world-views are forced to interact on a regular basis, and so we will also explore how cities, in forcing such close encounters, become crucibles for social change. Grading: Presentation on an ancient city (25 minutes): 25% Final paper (@5,500-6,000 words—send to me by 12/12): 35% Weekly 500 word blog-response to the reading (post by 5pm Sunday): 25% Class participation (occasional discussion leadership as well as regular and informed participation in discussions): 15% (Because this is a one-day-a-week seminar, regular class attendance is vital. More than one missed class will impact your grade negatively.) Blog: The purpose of the blog is to provide a space for composed reflection on the readings and to help stimulate the next day’s discussion. Focus on a point or points in the readings that particularly interested you or that made you draw a connection to something that we haven’t discussed but should. Respond to someone else’s post or draw attention to a point in the readings that you disagree with. Feel free to associate wildly if issues in the readings remind you of others—ancient or modern. Go ahead and link to outside sources (particularly those that don’t add a burden to the reading load). So long as you explain how something is relevant, it’s fair game. Final paper For many cities in the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world there is a wealth of archaeological and sometimes also textual data. But despite the richness of the material, relatively few scholars have brought these cities into dialogue with works written by anthropological archaeologists or urban sociologists and geographers. In your paper you will focus upon one particular well-documented city (this should be a different city than you present on) and discuss one or more aspects of it, bringing it into dialogue with scholarship on ancient urbanism and urban studies more generally.

CLASS SCHEDULE 9/9 Ancient urbanism 9/16 Cities in comparative perspective: setting an agenda Marcus, J., and J. A. Sabloff. 2008. “Introduction” + “Cities and Urbanism: Central Themes and Future Directions.” In

The Ancient City: New Perspectives on Urbanism in the Old and New World, eds. J. Marcus and J. A. Sabloff. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 3-26, 323-336.

Smith, M. L. 2003 “Introduction.” In The Social Construction of Ancient Cities, ed. M. L. Smith.

Washington: Smithsonian Books, pp. 1-28 Southall, A. 1998 “Introduction.” + “Writing the City under Crisis.” In The City in Time and Space.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, pp. 1-22. Charlton, T. H., and D. L. Nichols 1997 “The City-State Concept: Development and Applications.” In The Archaeology of City-

States: Cross-Cultural Approaches, eds. D. H. Nichols and T. H. Charlton. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 1-14.

Hansen, M. H. 2000 “Introduction: The Concepts of City-State and City-State Culture.” In A Comparative

Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, ed. M. H. Hansen. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Polis Center, pp. 11-34.

9/23 Cities in comparative perspective: manifestos Blanton, R. E. 1976 “Anthropological Studies of Cities.” Annual Review of Anthropology 5: 249-264. Butzer, K. W. 2008 “Other Perspectives on Urbanism: Beyond the Disciplinary Boundaries.” In The

Ancient City: New Perspectives on Urbanism in the Old and New World, eds. J. Marcus and J. A. Sabloff. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 77-92.

Mumford, L. 1961 “The Nature of the Ancient City.” In The City in History: Its Origins, Its

Transformations, and its Prospects. New York: Harcourt and Brace Jovanovich, pp. 94-118.

Soja, E. W. 2000 “Remapping the Geohistory of Cityspace: Introduction.” In Postmetropolis: Critical

Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1-18. Yoffee, N. 2005. “The Meaning of Cities in the Earliest States and Civilizations.” In Myths of the

Archaic State. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42-90. 9/30 The urban revolution & Early Near Eastern Cities Childe, V. G. 1950 “The Urban Revolution.” Town Planning Review 21: 3-17. Cowgill, G. 2004 “Origins and Development of Urbanism: Archaeological Perspectives.” Annual Review

of Anthropology 33: 525-542.

Smith, M. E. 2009 “V. Gordon Childe and the Urban Revolution: A Historical Perspective on a

Revolution in Urban Studies.” Town Planning Review 80.1: 3-29. Soja, E. W. 2000 “Remapping the Geohistory of Cityspace: The Second Urban Revolution. In

Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 50-70.

Van de Mieroop, M. 1997 “The Urban Landscape.” In The Ancient Mesopotamian City. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, pp. 63-100. 10/7 Near Eastern Cities of the Late Bronze Age & Iron Age Baker, H. D. 2007 “Urban form in the first millennium BC.” In The Babylonian World, ed, G. Leick.

London: Routledge, pp. 66-77. 2011 “From street altar to palace: reading the built environment of urban Babylonia.” In The

Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, eds. K. Radner & E. Robson. Oxford: OUP, pp. 533-552.

Forthcoming “The Babylonian cities: investigating urban morphology using texts and archaeology.” In The Fabric of Cities: Aspects of Urbanism, Urban Topography and Society in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, eds. N. May and U. Steinert. Leiden: Brill.

Harmansah, O. 2012 “Beyond Assur: New Cities and the Assyrian Politics of Landscape.” Bulletin of the

American Schools of Oriental Research 365: 53-77. Mielke, D. P. 2011 “Hittite Cities – Looking for a Concept.” In Insights into Hittite History and

Archaeology, ed. D. P. Mielke. Leuven: Colloquia Antiqa, pp. 153-94. 10/14 Pharaonic Egyptian cities Bard, K. A. 2008 “Royal Cities and Cult Centers, Administrative Towns, and Workmen's Settlements in

Ancient Egypt.” In The Ancient City: New Perspectives on Urbanism in the Old and New World, eds. J. Marcus and J. A. Sabloff. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 165-182.

Goelet, O. 2003 “Memphis and Thebes: Disaster and Renewal in Ancient Egyptian Consciousness.”

The Classical World 97.1: 19-29. Kemp, B. J. 1989 “Egypt in microcosm: the city of El-Amarna.” In Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a

Civilization. London: Routledge, pp. 261-317. Wenke, R. J. 1997 “City-states, Nation-states and Territorial States: The Problem of Egypt.” In The

Archaeology of City-States: Cross-Cultural Approaches, eds. D. H. Nichols and T. H. Charlton. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 27-49.

10/21 The Greek Polis I Hansen, M. H. 2006 Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State. Oxford: Oxford UP, pp. 1-115.

10/28 No class 11/4 The Greek Polis II Morris, I. 1991 “The Early Polis as City and State.” In City and Country in the Ancient World, ed. J.

Rich and A. Wallace-Hadrill. New York: Routledge, pp. 25-57. Jameson, M. 1990 “Private Space and the Greek City.” In The Greek City from Homer to Alexandria, eds.

O. Murray and S. Price. Oxford: Oxford UP, pp. 171- 196. Murray, O. 1990 “Cities of Reason.” In The Greek City from Homer to Alexandria, eds. O. Murray and

S. Price. Oxford: Oxford UP, pp. 1-25. Nixon, L and S. Price 1990 “Size and Resources of Greek Cities.” In The Greek City from Homer to Alexandria,

eds. O. Murray and S. Price. Oxford: Oxford UP, pp. 137-170. Schmitt-Pantel, P. 1990 “Collective Activities and the Political in the Greek City.” In The Greek City from

Homer to Alexandria, eds. O. Murray and S. Price. Oxford: Oxford UP, pp. 199-214. 11/11 Hellenistic Cities Billows, R. 2003 “Cities.” In A Companion to the Hellenistic World, ed. A. Erskine. Oxford: Blackwell

Press, pp. 196-215. Mumford, L. 1961 “The Emergence of the Polis” + “Citizen versus Ideal City” + “Hellenistic Absolutism

and Urbanity.” In The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and its Prospects. New York: Harcourt and Brace Jovanovich, pp. 148-204.

Wycherley, R. E. 1951 “Hellenistic Cities.” Town Planning Review 22.3: 177-205. 11/18 Imperial Rome Patterson, J. R. 1992 “The City of Rome from Republic to Empire.” Journal of Roman Studies 82: 186-215. Stambagh, J. E. 1988 The Ancient Roman City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 89-197. 11/25 Italian cities of the Roman world Laurence, R. 1995 “The Organization of Space in Pompeii.” In Urban Society in Roman Italy, eds. T.

Cornell and K. Lomas. London: UCL Press, pp. 63-78. Owens, E. J. 1992 “Planning in the Roman Empire” + “The Ancient City and the Urban Infrastructure.”

In The City in the Greek and Roman World. New York: Routledge, pp. 121-163. Stambagh, J. E. 1988 The Ancient Roman City. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 243-286. Wallace-Hadril, A. 1995 “Public Honor and Private Shame: The Urban Texture of Pompeii.” In Urban Society

in Roman Italy, ed. T. Cornell and K. Lomas. London: UCL Press, pp. 39-62.

12/2 Other Cities of the Roman World I: Classical & Byzantine Egyptian cities Alston, R. 2002 “Introduction” + “Cities and Space” + “Streets, Districts and Neighborhoods” In The

City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-43; 128-184. 12/9 Other Cities of the Roman World II Liebeschuetz, W. 1992 “The end of the ancient city.” In The City in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Rich. New York:

Routledge, pp. 1-49. Perring, D. 1991 “Spatial organization and social change in Roman towns.” In City and Country in the

Ancient World, ed. J. Rich and A. Wallace-Hadrill. New York: Routledge, pp. 273-293.

Reece, R. 1992 “The end of the city in Roman Britian.” In The City in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Rich. New

York: Routledge, pp. 136-144. Tainter, J. A. 1992 The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 39-126.