It is with great pleasure that we invite you to attend the annual summer celebration at Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). It will take place Wednesday 19 June 2019 at 16:30 at UrbNet, Moesgård Allé 20 (bldg. 4230, 2^nd floor), 8270 Højbjerg.

As per tradition, this will be an informal get-together for UrbNet employees, centre associates/partners and friends of the centre, giving us all an opportunity to meet over a glass of wine and wish each other a lovely summer. Many of you are central players in our day-to-day business; others attend our lectures once in a while, and yet others support/follow us in other ways; regardless of the exact nature of your involvement, we very much enjoy working with you and are thankful for your interest in and support of our endeavours.

We hope to see you 19 June! Please RSVP no later than 5 June (Christina Levisen: levisen@cas.au.dk)

The opening lecture (16:30–17:30) will be given by Visiting Professor Michael E. Smith (Arizona State University), and is entitled: What is the value of premodern cities?

Abstract

Archaeological fieldwork and documentary analysis in the past few decades has greatly improved our knowledge of many individual early cities around the globe. What is the value of this knowledge, beyond the realm of the individual cities investigated? I address this question on two levels. First, research on early urban centers contributes greatly to knowledge of early societies and cultures in general. Cities are key nodes in any urban society, and urban contexts provide an important window into wider patterns of ancient economy, politics, and society. Second, premodern cities can provide insights into general urban processes and the nature of urbanism today and into the future. I outline three arguments to support this claim: the urban trajectory argument (archaeological and historical research reveals change over long trajectories of time), the sample size argument (knowledge of early cities increases the size of the sample of cities scholars can draw on to understanding urbanism), and the laboratory argument (early cities are a laboratory for testing general propositions about urbanism and social processes). Archaeologists and historians of early cities can improve the chances that their findings will be of wider value—on both levels—by attention to key issues of method and theory, particularly comparative analysis and the use of middle-range theory.