Urban Life in the Distant Past

Michael Smith is Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. An archaeologist who has directed excavations at Aztec sites, he has forged a new approach to the scientific and comparative analysis of early cities based on transdisciplinary research projects that link ancient and contemporary urbanism.  He has published fifteen books and more than 150 articles.

'This book presents a wealth of information on early cities in a synthetic and comparative framework, analyzed with a consistent methodology that embraces clear definitions, quantification, and statistical analysis. For those reasons and others, scholars interested in early cities and urbanism will find the book to be essential reading, and it deserves a wide audience.' Michael W. Love, American Antiquity

• 1. Premodern cities and the wide urban world; 2. The prehistory of energized crowding; 3. The size of cities and settlements; 4. States, cities, and power; 5. Markets, crafts, and urban life; 6. Top-down insitutions and the scale of urban life; 7. Generative forces and urban life; 8. The value of premodern cities today.