Proto-city

The label of a proto-city is applied to Neolithic mega-sites that are large and population-dense for their time but lack most other characteristics that are found in later urban settlements such as those of the Mesopotamian city-states in the 4th Millennium B.C.[3] These later urban sites are commonly distinguished by a dense, stratified population alongside a level of organisation that facilitated the building of public works, the redistribution of food surpluses and raids into surrounding areas.[1] In contrast, proto-urban sites such as Çatalhöyük are population dense but lack clear signs of central control and social stratification, such as large public works.[6]

The development of cities from proto-urban sites was not a linear progression in most cases. Rather, proto-cities are defined as "early experiments" in high-density living that "did not develop further",[3] particularly in their level of population,[17] suggesting a more flexible and complex trajectory to urbanisation.[3][18]

Alternatively, a number of proto-urban population centres such as Tell Brak in Northern Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium B.C. can be considered "successful experiments" that adopted new social and political institutions to mitigate internal conflicts.[6] These sites anticipate the administrative practices of Southern Mesopotamian city-states such as Uruk, such as the use of seals to denote ownership or control. At Tell Brak, a stamp sealing with a motif of a lion suggests the authority of a senior official; in later periods Mesopotamians considered the lion a symbol of kingship.[5]

The Anu Ziggurat at Uruk. V. Gordon Childe regarded large public buildings as one of the defining features of the earliest cities.[19]

By the end of the fourth millennium B.C., the emergence of the city of Uruk in Southern Mesopotamia reflected the social, cultural and political developments of proto-cities in the region during prior centuries. The city can be viewed as “the culmination of a series of increasingly successful experiments in settlement nucleation”.[3] Extremely large in scale (250 ha, twice the size of Tell Brak), Uruk was a centre of religious and political power, with large, well-decorated households and temples indicating a political and religious elite. As the most prominent of the early Mesopotamian cities, Uruk has yielded the earliest written documents (c. 3300 BC) and also the largest area of public buildings from the fourth millennium B.C., making it among the most significant of the early settlements that archeologists classify as cities.[3][20]

The rise of urban settlements such as Uruk is often attributed to a "revolution" in social relations where - among other factors - the complex division of labour and the production of an agricultural surplus resulted in the development of social classes and ultimately, the centralisation of power around key institutions such as a ruler or other elements of government.[3][21] In the first cities and states, this shifted societal relations from being based on kinship to being based on residence or class.[3] Monumental architecture - attributed to the state - served as a symbol of political power, and may have also served to bind commoners emotionally to their city and to their ruler through the act of construction.[19] As opposed to the popular view of the use of slave labour to construct ancient monuments, much of the labour was provided by free commoners as part of their tax requirements.[19]

An alternative explanation of the urbanisation process suggests that changes in social relations may not have been as revolutionary in the earliest cities, where kinship may not have been replaced, but rather redefined to incorporate entire settlements and cities.[3][22] The temples and palaces of the Mesopotamian city-states were run like households, using household terminologies such as "father", "son" and "servant".[22] Houses in the village settlements of the fifth millennium B.C. Ubaid Period in Mesopotamia shared the same layout with temples both in the proto-urban settlement at Tell Brak and in the city of Uruk in the fourth millennium B.C; a common resident of Uruk would still be able to recognise a temple as a house, albeit different in scale and grandeur.[3] Thus, through the course of the fourth millennium B.C., households might have been replaced not by the state, but rather by a metaphorical household that spanned an entire city rather than just an immediate family.[3][22] The formation of the first cities may have been somewhat accidental if ambitious household heads trying to expand their social connections unintentionally grew their settlement by attracting new followers, even if they originally aimed to sustain and expand their own household.[3]

The precise definition of what constitutes a proto-urban, urban or rural settlement has been a source of ambiguity and debate. As noted by V. Gordon Childe, “The concept of ‘city’ is notoriously hard to define”.[21] Childe’s 1950 concept of the “Urban Revolution” remains the prevailing framework for understanding the origins of cities, and lists ten criteria which differentiate Neolithic villages from the first “proper” cities.[16][2][14] Among other features, the most enduring of Childe’s criteria include: a large and dense settlement population, the specialisation of labour, the concentration of an agricultural surplus by a centralised authority, the creation of social classes, and the centralisation of political power away from families and households.[19]

Many of Childe’s criteria are still widely recognised as key milestones in the development of early complex societies, and his basic model can still be discerned within most modern accounts of the development of the earliest cities.[19] More modern archaeological studies discuss the “origin of states”, “primary state formation” or “archaic states” as opposed to any “Urban Revolution”, and it is noted that “Childe's concept of the Urban Revolution was about the transition to complex, state level societies, and not primarily about urbanism or cities per se”.[19]

Childe's enduring influence in defining urban settlements has been frequently called into question, as his description features “nothing about the form or aesthetics of the City, or any particular city”,[19] rather, it “combined urbanism and the state in a single sequence and permitted the uncritical evaluation of this particular association”.[14] Another criticism of the Childean approach has been its reliance on a Eurocentric framework with questionable validity on a global scale, ignoring site and cultural-specific details and ultimately constituting a “check-list approach”.[16] Alternative, more flexible methods of differentiating a city from other types of sites have been less effective at differentiating between different site types, such as between urban, proto-urban or pre-urban. Thus, the precise classification of early urban phenomena is often ambiguous and subject to debate.[2]

• Tell es-Sultan
• Çatalhöyük
• Aşıklı Höyük
• Lepenski Vir
• Sesklo
• Sarazm
• Mehrgarh
• Bhirrana
• Jiahu
• Neolithic Revolution