The settlement archaeology pioneered by Robert McCormick Adams extended the scope of archaeological investigations to a regional scale, an approach that has been continued in recent years in landscape archaeology. An array of new technologies for recognizing, visualizing, and analyzing data has considerably expanded the possibilities for documenting and presenting the remains of ancient settlements and land use. Relatively unexamined, however, are the broader implications accompanying thes...

THEMATIC ISSUE: RETHINKING URBANIZATION AND ITS LIVING LANDSCAPES FROM THE INSPIRING PERSPECTIVE OF A GREAT “MAESTRO” Edited by Marcella Frangipane and Linda Manzanilla INTRODUCTION. THE MANY DIMENSIONS OF THE “CITY” IN EARLY SOCIETIES Marcella Frangipane THE ORIGINS OF CIVIC LIFE – A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE David Wengrow MESOPOTAMIA AND NEIGHBOURING REGIONS SIXTY YEARS AFTER CITY INVINCIBLE, SURVEYS AND THE URBAN REVOLUTION IN QUESTION Pascal Butterlin THE CITY OF URUK AND ITS HINTERLAND Hans ...

The central issues discussed in this new collected work in the highly successful ancient textiles series are the relationships between fiber resources and availability on the one hand and the ways those resources were exploited to produce textiles on the other. Technological and economic practices - for example, the strategies by which raw materials were acquired and prepared - in the production of textiles play a major role in the papers collected here.Contributions investigate th...

Inequalities take many forms, ranging from class distinctions to those based on gender or age. In this paper I examine some of the early steps in the development of social inequalities in the early settlement history (Late Neolithic through Early Chalcolithic) of the Fars region of southern Iran. I focus on contexts and mechanisms in and by which the social reproduction of egalitarian relations began to break down, paving the way for the emergence of inequalities. I draw on evidence of bui...

A crucial element in the examination of food-related practices is a consideration of how plants and animals are turned into food. Much archaeological research has been focused on the acquisition of food ingredients, but considerably less attention has been devoted to specific forms of food preparation (but see papers in Pollock ed. 2012). In a survey of the literature, I have examined forms of food preparation that require heat (cooking, roasting, baking) and specifically the fire installa...