The Social Construction of Ancient Cities by Monica L. Smith

Author:Monica L. Smith [Smith, Monica L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58834-344-4
Publisher: Smithsonian
Published: 2013-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Specialized relationships that structure urban economies provide perhaps the most tangible expression of the urban form. The exploding out of productive activities from the bounds of household and community, the disarticulation of production from the distribution of products, the creation of surplus above the needs of the producer, the mobilization of that surplus to serve the needs of a burgeoning elite—all these aspects of urban economy leave an indelible stamp on the distribution of goods and people across a landscape, a stamp detectable even many millennia after the urban society has faded from memory. It is not surprising, then, that urban economic relations have, until recently, been the primary focus of archaeological studies of the initial contexts and consequences of the emergence of urbanism in premodern societies around the globe.

There are, of course, other potent manifestations of urbanism: the hierarchical social relations, the co-option of power into the hands of a ruling elite, the manipulation of symbols of religious and corporate identity to create an urban ethos of cohesion and membership, the free-wheeling and at times quite fluid negotiation of status within cities and between cities and their hinterlands. And it is entirely appropriate, if not overdue, that these aspects of the urban phenomenon are receiving increased notice by archaeologists interested in the study of early premodern urban societies. But as our attention turns to these social and political aspects of urbanism, it is important to keep in mind that at its core urbanism represents the disaggregation of a wide range of social, political, and economic relations that were once embedded in kinship and community into a more fragmented matrix of progressively segregated and impersonalized actions and actors. It is also important to remember that the developments in each of these spheres take direction from, and in turn help to direct, the trajectory of the others. Throughout this process, economic relations serve as a major engine both driving and supporting the reconfiguration of social and political spheres into uniquely urban forms. Continued attention to economic relations in early urban society, then, still holds considerable potential for understanding the genesis of urbanism, both as a direct marker of one of its key characteristics, and as a means of monitoring the progressive restructuring of other key components of urban society.

Studies of ancient urban economy have tended to concentrate on tracing the emergence of specialized craft production and the development of mechanisms that co-opt and channel the products of these activities within and outside the system (Earle and Brumfiel 1987; Johnson 1973; Smith 1976). While craft production is a highly visible marker of the specialized relationships that underlie the urban economy, other economic relations may be equally illuminating as to how urban economies arose and functioned. In particular, food provisioning in early urban societies has increasingly been recognized as a highly profitable area of study (Hastorff 1993; Zeder 1991). Indeed, one of the most remarkable transformations of the urban economy is the way in which basic activities related to the production of food,

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