From First Farmers to First Cities in Western Asia and Europe

The relationship between farming and the emergence cities is a key question in the archaeology of western Asia and Europe.  In this study, Amy Bogaard explores how the earliest villages and cities were sustained through evolving agricultural strategies. Deploying the latest methods and evidence, she offers new approaches for predicting how settlement scale and density shaped agricultural practices, and for reconstructing farming methods as they evolved alongside urbanisation. Bogaard demonstrates how Neolithic farming took off with the integration of small-scale cultivation and herding, held together by the work and ownership claims of households. Urbanisation challenged resilient Neolithic farming practices, as early cities co-evolved with the expansion of low-input cereal monocultures.  Nevertheless, diverse Neolithic farming traditions persisted in these urban landscapes, creating richer agroecologies and more sustainable cities. Bogaard's study offers exciting insights into how farming and cities emerged in the deep past, along with the theory, toolkit, and data necessary for building knowledge of ancient farming, and for reflecting on farming futures.