Abstract

The textbook vision of early towns is that of a strongbox, a container of power: a dense settlement, clearly delimited from its surroundings, the inhabitants of which make their principal livelihood from non-food-producing activities. As a corollary, urban communities are widely thought to have always existed in a symbiosis with the surrounding countryside, whence food and other subsistence-goods were drawn. These assumptions are frequently challenged by the realities revealed by archaeology. The special activities of emporia and other early towns are sometimes found to blend amorphously into complex landscapes, defying the image of the strongbox. Meanwhile, the small populations of early urban communities had access to other resources than those produced by rural populations in their hinterland: through gardening, fishing and resources brought through their long-distance networks. This lecture argues that we need to study the morphology of urban space in nested scales from buildings and yards to neighbourhoods and landscapes. Moreover, this study is inextricably linked to the study of environmental evidence of the interactions at these various scales.