Monica L. Smith

Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States

Abstract With broad lines and dark shading, the cartographic depictions of ancient states and empires convey the impression of comprehensive political entities having firm boundaries and uniform territorial control. These depictions oversimplify the complexities of early state growth, as well as overstating the capacity of central governments to control large territories. Archaeological and textual evidence suggests that ancient states are better understood through network models rather than bounded-territory models. Network approaches enable us to depict competition within and among polities as they grow, the efficient use of nodal points as a focus for political leaders, and the realities of nonoverlapping ritual, social, and economic activities that have an impact on political cohesion. Network maps and bounded-territory representations are compared for the Inka, Mauryan, and Sassanian polities.

The Role of Ordinary Goods in Premodern Exchange

The use of consumption studies to examine the social as well as the utilitarian role played by ordinary domestic goods helps to explain why exchange is a compelling social phenomenon. Under conditions of emergent social complexity, exchange activities become even more important, because a diversity of goods enables an ever-growing number of individuals to demonstrate membership in cross-cutting social groups based on status, ethnicity, age, gender, and profession. An archaeological case study in central India, in which it was found that nonlocal goods were widespread in a medium-sized town in the early centuries A.D., provides data for the evaluation of consumption activities at the household level, in which “social subsistence” was manifest in the acquisition and use of a shared material culture.

Urban empty spaces. Contentious places for consensus-building

As a relatively recent human phenomenon, cities are the physical culmination of many pre-existing psychological, social and cognitive capacities. The persistent presence of deliberately empty spaces in urban areas both past and present signals the conscious creation and maintenance of those locales at various levels: household, neighbourhood and civic/centralizing. Domestic empty space, in particular the space between and among habitations, was likely to have been curated and managed at the household level. However, neighbourhood-level and urban-level empty spaces were subject to multiple demands and levels of oversight; as a result, this publicly available emptiness was flexible in its use but also potentially ‘expensive’ to govern. The presence of empty spaces in an urban setting may serve as a proxy for understanding the relationship between different levels of urban interaction, from the relative autonomy of the household that used its nearby spaces idiosyncratically, to the larger impositions of authority through urban design in the form of streets and open plazas. Specific examples of empty space are assessed for the ancient city of Sisupalgarh in eastern India, where geophysical surveys and excavations have enabled us to discuss the multiple meanings of nothingness at the household, neighbourhood and urban scales.

Territories, corridors, and networks: A biological model for the premodern state

When depicted on maps as homogenous territorial wholes, ancient states are visually summarized as static entities in a way that conceals the highly fluid dynamics of polity formation, maintenance, and growth. Models derived from studies of animal behavior show that “territory” does not consist of an undifferentiated use of the landscape. Instead, the concept of territory can be parsed into a series of resource-rich nodes linked by corridors of access, surrounded by unutilized regions and boundaries marked at points of competition. Ancient human groups also can be analyzed as having perceived and occupied landscapes through strategies of flexible networks in which nodes and corridors were surrounded by unutilized spaces around which boundaries were selectively identified and defended. This strategy is identifiable in human social groups at different levels of complexity ranging from hunter-gatherers through ancient chiefdoms and states.

Citizen science in archaeology

Abstract Citizen science, as a process of volunteer participation through crowdsourcing, facilitates the creation of mass data sets needed to address subtle and large-scale patterns in complex phenomena. Citizen science efforts in other field disciplines such as biology, geography, and astronomy indicate how new web-based interfaces can enhance and expand upon archaeologists’ existing platforms of volunteer engagement such as field schools, community archaeology, site stewardship, and professional–avocational partnerships. Archaeological research can benefit from the citizen science paradigm in four ways: fieldwork that makes use of widely available technologies such as mobile applications for photography and data upload; searches of large satellite image collections for site identification and monitoring; crowdfunding; and crowdsourced computer entry of heritage data.

How Ancient Agriculturalists Managed Yield Fluctuations through Crop Selection and Reliance on Wild Plants: An Example from Central India

ZusammenfassungThe use of “average” yields to formulate models of premodern agriculture obscures the dynamic components of agricultural decision-making. Using colonial documents and archaeological data from the Deccan region of central India, this paper illustrates the complexities of how ancient peoples mitigated fluctuations in agricultural yields. Nineteenth-century documents show striking differences in yields from year to year, and illustrate the way in which people compensated for those fluctuations by using wild foods and cultivating alternate crops that were less palatable but more reliable. Archaeobotanical, archaeological, and textual data from the Chalcolithic to the Early Historic periods (c. 1500 B.C. to 300 A.D.) indicate similar adaptive strategies, in which the early inhabitants of the region managed resources at the household level to provide subsistence security as well as the steady provision of a tradable surplus.ResumenLes analyses d’agriculture prémoderne, fondées sur un modèle de récoltes “moyennes,” cachent les complexités de l’usage de plusieurs stratégies d’agriculture ainsi que de ressources naturels. Ici, l’économie de l’Inde centrale dans les premiers siècles de notre ère est établie par les données de la paléobotanique et d’archéologie, une perspective augmentée par l’étude des documents du dix-neuvième siècle. Ces documents indiquent une grand variation de récoltes d’une saison et d’une année à l’autre, et que les agriculteurs balançaient leurs besoins de soutenance physique et sociale avec plusieurs stratégies parmi lesquel l’usage des produits forestières étaient très important. L’inclusion des ces paramètres pour la période premoderne nous permet de reconstruire non seulement les activités agriculturels, mais aussi l’impact de ces activités sur les activités économiques et sociales outre du foyer domestique.

Urban infrastructure as materialized consensus

Abstract Infrastructure that shapes and facilitates daily life, such as pathways, conduits and boundary walls, constitutes one of the most dynamic forms of architecture in both ancient and modern cities. Although infrastructure is conceived and designed with particular goals and capacities, its temporal and spatial scale means that it is a constant work in progress that engages numerous agents: civic authorities design and implement infrastructure; designated agencies maintain and repair infrastructure; and ordinary people utilize, modify, ignore or destroy it. Infrastructure can be thus analyzed as a materialization of ongoing communication, in which there are often conflicts among different constituents to achieve consensus. The linguistic concepts of expert language and turn-taking are utilized to assess three brief case studies: historical New Orleans; a multipurpose micro-park in Vienna, Austria; and the archaeological city of Sisupalgarh, India.

Seeking Abundance: Consumption as a Motivating Factor in Cities Past and Present

Purpose – This paper utilizes the perspective of abundance, rather than scarcity, to understand economies of cities. It also proposes that the earliest urban centers were attractive places of settlement because they represented a greater variety of jobs and objects compared to the rural countryside. Design/methodology/approach – The evolutionary trajectory of our species indicates that humans sought out abundance in their natural environments as early as a million years ago. People also deliberately replicated conditions of abundance through the manufacture and discard of large quantities of repetitive objects, and through the “waste” of usable goods. The development of urban centers 6,000 years ago provided new opportunities for both production and consumption and an abundance of diverse goods and services. These processes are analogous to contemporary economists’ views of abundance as a desirable principle and Chris Andersons view of the Long Tail as the explanatory mechanism for the production and consumption of goods when greater distribution becomes possible. Social implications – Today, cities are growing very rapidly despite objectively deleterious conditions such as crowding, pollution, competition, and disease transmission. By recognizing the “pull” factors of consumption and opportunity, researchers can expend their energies to mitigate the negative effects of cities’ inevitable growth. Originality/value – Prior archaeological and contemporary analyses of cities have focused on the role of the upper echelons of the political and economic hierarchy; in contrast, this “bottom-up” approach addresses the attractions of cities from the perspective of ordinary inhabitants.

The archaeology of a “Destroyed” Site: Surface survey and historical documents at the civilian conservation corps camp, bandelier national monument, New Mexico

Archaeological records and historical documents provide complementary data for the understanding of temporary laborers’ quarters related to large-scale construction projects. In this work, documents are used to evaluate data from an archaeological surface survey of a large 1930s era work camp of the Civilian Conservation Corps in northern New Mexico. The camp, occupied for seven years, was bulldozed immediately after its occupants left. Despite this drastic step, surface remains are still visible, and the site was recorded in 1990 and 1991 as part of a long-term survey project at Bandelier National Monument. Artifacts, rubble, and altered vegetation patterns constitute the known archaeological remains of the site and form the basis for the identification of activity areas. Historic maps and photographs complement artifact analysis and vegetation studies to illustrate the camp’s configurations.

The Origins of the Sustainability Concept: Risk Perception and Resource Management in Early Urban Centers

Abstract Purpose This paper examines the conditions under which ancient peoples might have developed a concept of “sustainability,” and concludes that long-term resource management practices would not have been articulated prior to the development of the first cities starting c. 6,000 years ago. Methodology/approach Using biological concepts of population density and niche-construction theory, cities are identified as the first places where pressures on resources might have triggered concerns for sustainability. Nonetheless, urban centers also provided ample opportunities for individuals and households to continue the same ad hoc foraging strategies that had facilitated human survival in prior eras. Social implications The implementation of a sustainability concept requires two things: individual and institutional motivations to mitigate collective risk over the long term, and accurate measurement devices that can discern subtle changes over time. Neither condition was applicable to the ancient world. Premodern cities provided the first expression of large population sizes in which there were niches of economic and social mutualism, yet individuals and households persisted in age-old approaches to provisioning by opportunistically using urban networks rather than focusing on a collective future. Originality/value Archaeological and historical analysis indicates that a focus on “sustainability” is not an innate human behavioral capacity but must be specifically articulated and taught.