Urban Economy: Cities and their Places in the Economy of Ancient Societies

The formations of central places in human societies involved the development of multi-scalar institutions, for which central places played key roles in the economy, politics, social stratification, and religion. With the development of cities, we see a clear linkage to a multiplicity of hierarchical relationships that increasingly dominated ancient and modern societies. The term city has been applied variously to large, populous settlements, depending on the theoretical orientation of scholars, different cultural and geographical areas where they occur, and phases of urbanization through which they pass (Marcus and Sabloff 2008). As seen from cases considered by our group, not all societies had large cities. Pueblo IV in the American Southwest, the Nordic Bronze Age (BA) chiefdoms, and the South Pare people of East Africa lived in settlements without having anything approaching a city. Cities were dynamic and diversified communities that changed according to the social, environmental, and political conditions that shaped their political and economic roles within their territories. They arose for different reasons and their formation requires understanding the economies and environmental conditions that supported them. But what is a city and what is urban? Those are important distinctions to make before comparing the economies of early urban societies.