Country in the City: Agricultural Functions of Protohistoric Urban Settlements (Aegean and Western Mediterranean)

Dominique Garcia, Raphael Orgeolet, Maia Pomadere, Julian Zurbach, Dominique Garcia, Raphael Orgeolet, Maia Pomadere, Julian Zurbach

• Publisher: Archaeopress Archaeology
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781789691320
• eBook ISBN: 9781789691337
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The existence of an opposition between rural and urban spaces is an important question for our societies, and one that has been posed since the radical transformations of the 20th century and the so-called 'end of the peasants'. In this context it becomes also a question for archaeologists and historians. This book assembles contributions on the place of agricultural production in the context of urbanization in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean. The contributions concentrate on the second-millennium Aegean and the protohistoric northwestern Mediterranean. They offer a reflection on the nature of urbanization and its consequences for rural spaces near cities and on the many ways in which rural spaces and agricultural activities may be intertwined with urban spaces – a reconsideration of the very nature of urbanism. A deliberate accent is laid on the comparative perspectives between different regions and periods of Mediterranean protohistory, and on the integration of all kinds of sources and research methods, from texts to survey to environmental archaeology. Highlighted throughout are the original paths followed in the Peloponnese or in the Troad with regard to the Minoan model of urbanization, and the many aspects and periods of Minoan urbanization (as in development in Languedoc vis-à-vis Catalonia). Thus a new perspective on Mediterranean urbanization is offered.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Elites and Farmers in Iberian Iron Age Cities (7th-2nd Centuries BC): Storage and Processing of Agricultural Products
• Are There Farmers in Lattara (Lattes, France) during the Iron Age? Plant Resources Acquirement and Management between the 5th and the 1st Centuries BC
• The Neglected ‘Fields’ of Proto-Urban Living: A View from Bronze Age Crete
• The Management of Agricultural Resources in the Minoan Town of Malia (Crete) from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Late Bronze Age
• Akrotiri, Thera : Glimpses of the Countryside as Seen Through the Archaeological and Bioarchaeological Data. Whispers of a Dialogue
• Feeding Knossos: Exploring Economic and Logistical Implications of Urbanism on Prehistoric Crete
• Beyond City and Country at Mycenae: Urban and Rural Practices in a Subsistence Landscape
• Agricultural Self-Sufficiency and Mycenaean Kalamianos on the Saronic Gulf
• Farming Practice and Land Management at Knossos, Crete: New Insights from δ13C and δ15N Analysis of Neolithic and Bronze Age Crop Remains
• Economy and Storage Strategies at Troy
• The Country in and Around the City Looking Back and Forward
• Back Cover