The Dictionary of Human Geography

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would have been mobilized on such a scale

and for such extensive periods of time, and

Paul Wheatley (1971, 1972) saw the city as

not only asacred spacebut also acosmogram,

‘the pivot of the four quarters’ (see also Carl,

Kemp, Laurence, Coningham, Higham and

Cowgill, 2000). Others, reactivating Childe’s

materialism, insisted on the importance of

the production and concentration of a surplus

within a supra-local economy dominated by

redistribution(Harvey, 1973). It may be,

however, that the distinction between ‘religion’

and ‘economy’ owes more to our own

language-systems and analytical distinctions

than to the world-views of the people who made

these extraordinary transitions. Focusing on

the king as ‘the dominant locus of spatial

production in southern Mesopotamia by the

Ur II period’, Smith (2003b) argues that the

king wasboththe guarantor of the fertility of the

land, and as such responsible for constructing

many of the large irrigation canals required

for agricultural production on the arid plains

of Sumer (see Adams, 1966), and also guaran-

tor of the security of the city, and as such

responsible for propitiating the gods through

a monumental architecture of ziggurats and

temples (see Gates, 2003). In short, the choice

between ‘gods’ or ‘granaries’ may be a false

one (see table).

Most urban geographers and historical

geographers have seen the study of urban ori-

gins as little more than a platform from which

to explore other, to them more pressing, issues

about the nature ofurbanism(Carter, 1977).

But research into the origins ofurbanism–in

the canonical sites and in others – has been

revitalized in recent years by new excavations,

new techniques ofremote sensingand recon-

struction, and new ideas (in particular a move

beyond the ‘new archaeology’ of the 1970s,

which was closely modelled onspatial sci-

ence, to a closer co-operation with anthropol-

ogy and a correspondingly greater interest in

economic, cultural and political processes).

Three debates have been particularly

important in opening up the trajectories

through which cities first emerged in different

cultures around the world:

. ‘Decoupling’ urbanization from agriculture.
Trading on two major excavations at
C ̧ atal Hoyuk in Anatolia by James Mellaart
and Ian Hodder (see Hodder, 2006), and
on a thought-experiment by Jane Jacobs
(1992 [1961]) – in which C ̧ atal Hoyuk
becomes ‘New Obsidian’ – Edward Soja
(2000b) proposed that ‘Rather than an agri-
cultural surplus being necessary for the cre-
ation of cities, it was cities that were
necessary for the creation of an agricultural
surplus.’ It is important to recognize that
the relations between subsistence, surplus
and city formation were many-stranded,
but the rise and fall of cities was often in-
timately connected to changing ecological
regimes and it seems unlikely that such a
global reversal can be sustained.
. ‘Decoupling’ urbanization from state forma-
tion. The first cities were closely associated
with the invention of writing systems, but
these were usually inventories of stocks and
flows of goods pivoting on the temple (ra-
ther than chronicles of kings) and so do not
necessarily tie the formation of the city to
the emergence of a centralizedstate(see
Yoffee, 2005). In South Asia, for example,
Smith (2006a, p. 109) shows that cities
were tied in to largereconomicsystems and
were ‘long-lived regardless of the political
configuration in which they were located’.
. ‘Decoupling’ urbanization from elites. Cities,
then as now, were more than monumental
performances of power. Many scholars do
still accept that the first cities ‘stressed
the insignificance of the ordinary person,
the power and legitimacy of the ruler, and
the concentration of supernatural power’
(Trigger, 2003, p. 121). But Smith (2006a)
insists on ‘the willing presence of a popula-
tion’ – as Mumford (1963) had it, the first
cities were ‘magnets’ as well as ‘containers’ –

Physical space Symbolic space

Religion:

intervention of the gods

Sacred precinct;

ziggurats; pyramids; temples

The city as sacred space

(‘the pivot of the four

quarters’)(1946, 1950)

Economy: redistribution

of the surplus

Granaries, barns,

cisterns; jars and

vats (‘a container of containers’)

Writing systems

(inventories then

chronicles)

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_U Final Proof page 789 31.3.2009 9:34pm

URBAN ORIGINS