Post-Childe, Post-Wirth: Response to Smith, Ur and Feinman

Peter J. Taylor

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2015, vol. 39, issue 1, 168-171

Abstract: This is a reply to a critique of Jane Jacobs' ‘cities first' thesis with respect to agricultural origins. The critique's basic premise is that the archaeological record regarding the development of agriculture precedes the earliest cities and therefore the thesis is empirically refuted. Accepting this archaeological record for agriculture, the dispute centres on the archaeological record for city origins. Substituting a process definition of cities—city-ness—for a ‘thing' definition (e.g. monumentality), this reply opens up pre-Mesopotamian possibilities for city networks while conceding the difficulty in empirically obtaining evidence in earlier periods. Thus Jacobs' thesis cannot be absolutely refuted, and an exciting agenda for urban research emerges for archaeologists and social scientists.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12181 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:39:y:2015:i:1:p:168-171

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0309-1317

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research is currently edited by Alan Harding, Roger Keil and Jeremy Seekings

More articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().