Prehistoric Cities
Sumer Egypt Indus China Maya Aztec Incas
INDUS
Urban Civilization 8000 BC- New Stone Age 3000 BC- Bronze Age 1000 BC- Iron Age
Urban revolution: 1. Surplus food 2. Support to specialists 3. Writing 4. Astronomy and maths
SUMER ● By the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into about a dozen independent city-states.
Assur Erbil
● The limits were defined by canals Babylon
and boundary stones. ● Each was centered on a temple
Ur
dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ● ruled over by a priestly governor
(ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites.
Sumrian script: 34th c BC (deciphered in the early half of 19th c)
Erbil, Northeast Iraq Continuously settled for more than 6000 years. Narrow street, private courtyards.
Excavation layers through the tell, Megiddo, Palestine.
Tell: A tell is created from a city’s new buildings being constructed on the ruins of old ones. In Mesopotamia where mud bricks were used for walls, their limited time span is of about 75 years. The rubbles of the collapsed house were used for new foundation. After thousands of years of this rebuilding process, the ground level of the settlement rises several 10s of meter from the surrounding. Megiddo is such an example. This phenomenon is similar in all historic cities. Rome’s ground level of Roman period are about 10 m below the present street levels.
UR, Iraq (21-19th c BC) Birthplace of Abraham
Features of the town Town wall (26’ from the plain, 77” at its base) Temenos—religious precinct Outer town settled in the earlier mound 2 storey buildings, burnt brick, plaster & white wash, 14 rooms around a central court town planning not apparent.
Hamurabi’s code (1790 BC) ●
If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him shall be put to death. ●
If any one break a hole into a house (break in to steal), he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried. ● If
a chieftain or a man leave his house, garden, and field and hires it out, and some one else takes possession of his house, garden, and field and uses it for three years: if the first owner return and claims his house, garden, and field, it shall not be given to him, but he who has taken possession of it and used it shall continue to use it.
● If a builder build a house for some one and complete it, he shall give him a fee of two shekels in money for each sar of surface. ● If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. ● If it ruin goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall re-erect the house from his own means. ● If a builder build a house for some one, even though he has not yet completed it; if then the walls seem toppling, the builder must make the walls solid from his own means. ● If while an ox is passing on the street (market) some one push it, and kill it, the owner can set up no claim in the suit (against the hirer).
KAHUN
Pharoh Senusret
The Pyramid Complex Similarity with Panchayan layout
Area: 20 acres Surrounding wall Occupied for about 20 yrs
K A H U N (2670 BC)
Features of Kahun 1- Rectangular shape, covering an area of 350 by 400 meters 2- It was surrounded by a brick wall and divided into two parts by another wall dividing the poor and rich residential areas. 3- There was a rich residential area, where a handful of 60 room large houses were fifty times as big as the houses in the poorer half of the city 4- The 44 m2 houses of the workmen had two rooms on the ground floor, and access to the flat roof, which was used as living and storing space. 5- The Great houses were 2700 m2 each and served as living quarters for the high officials in charge of the construction work. 6- The streets all over the city were laid out in straight lines. 7- The alleys leading to the workers' houses ended in cul-de-sacs 8- The main street was nine meters wide, as opposed to the alleys and streets in the workers districts which were as narrow as 1.5 meters 9- There was no space left for gardens inside the walls of the city. The whole area was covered with streets and one-storey mud-brick buildings. 10- The streets had shallow stone channels running down the middle for drainage
Buildings adjoined the wall on each side. The town was roughly square, measuring 384 meters on the north and 335 meters on the west. The ground slopes gradually, the highest point on the northwest being the "acropolis." At least three town districts, separated by walls, can be distinguished. The first, is the acropolis, perhaps intended for the king himself, the second, the east quarter, with large mansions centered around a court, and consisting of as many as 70 or 80 rooms, the west quarter of smaller uniform dwellings each with 4 to 12 rooms. The larger houses each had a court with columns around the middle, and in the center stood a small stone tank. The roofs were of beams overlaid with straw bundles and plastered with mud, but some were of brickwork. The doors too were arched in brick. Immediately south of the "acropolis" may have stood a temple. Many references in the papyri indicate that the town did possess its own temple, to the falcon star-god Sopdu, Lord of the East, and possessed its own priesthood.
The town possessed a haty'a, or mayor, an office of the vizier, where legal proceedings took place, an office for an administrative official called the wehemu. Papyri were also discovered, some carefully sealed up, such as the wills of Uah and Antefmeri. A hymn of praise to Senusret II, some pages of a medical work, a veterinary papyrus, mathematical works, and parts of legal letters, accounts and memoranda were also found.
Tel-el-Amarma (14th C BC) Housing area to the contractors and workers building a new city. The excavation show the settlement in square shape with walls around it, and arrangement of plots in parallel street schemes. occupied for only 40 years.
Pharaoh selected site for tombs and resided nearby. Once the Pharaoh died, the place was left to priests. The new pharaoh moved to the new site.
The Giza Necropolis
The three Giza pyramids are said to be in Orion constelleation The oldest built in 2650 BC.
Indus Cities
Mohenjo-daro
Streets oriented to the setting of Saprarshi
Sewer line
Drainage line
Toilet
Mohenjo-daro (3rd millenium BC)—most advanced urban civilization of the time
The bust could be of a priest
The great Bath
Mohenjo-daro, in the forground is the courtyard with rooms around
A reconstruction view of Mohenjo-daro. At the top left (northwest) is the citadel.
The scripts not yet deciphered.
Various seals that show swastika, bull, horse, elephants and Indus script
Lothal, a dockyard town
Urban Civilization: Childe’s propositions— 1.Division of labor 2.Monumental structures—temples and palaces 3.Writing and literati class 4.Craftsmen 5.Surplus production 6.The State
â—? In
anthropology and archaeology, the Urban Revolution is the process by which small, kin-based, non literate agricultural communities were transformed into large, socially complex, urban societies. â—? The
term "urban revolution" was introduced in the 1930s by Gordon Childe, an Australian archaeologist. (cf Neolithic Rev)
â—?
Childe applied concepts and theories from the social sciences to interpret archaeological finds. Childe first discussed the Urban Revolution in his 1936 book, Man Makes Himself.
Childe was the first to synthesize and organize the large volume of new archaeological data in the early 20th century in social terms. Whereas previous archaeologists had concentrated on chronology and technology,
In TPR paper(1950), he presented a 10-point model for the changes that characterized the Urban Revolution: 1. Large population and large settlements (cities) 2. Full-time specialization and advanced division of labor 3. Production of an agricultural surplus to fund government and a differentiated society 4. Monumental public architecture 5. A ruling class 6. Writing 7. Exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, calendars) 8. Sophisticated art styles 9. Long-distance trade 10. The state.
Decline of Civilization Indus case-1. Shift of Monsoon, ecological changes 2. Increase in popn, deforestation, decay of culture, loss of authority control (There is a marked decline in the quality of buildings of later periods) 3. Change in river flow pattern and flooding 4. Invasion of the Aryan (Hypothetical, secondary cause?)