Ancient Maya cities are being destroyed

Maya pyramid being destroyed in Belize

A Maya pyramid (well, an ex-pyramid) at the ancient Maya city of Nohmul in Belize, Central America, is in the news this week. It seems that a local road builder decided the pyramid was the most convenient place to get road fill, so he went along merrily destroying the ancient pyramid. The main story is here; you can also check out a slightly earlier news story from Belize.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing goes on all the time. Hundreds of sites are seriously damaged, and even destroyed, every year. It turns out that most of the areas with the richest record of ancient urban sites happen to be some of the poorest countries in the world today. Belize has thousands of Maya ruins, but the country only has the resources to protect a small number of them. Mexico is a far richer country, with a far larger government archaeological agency to protect sites. But Mexico is also a very large country, with many tens of thousands of sites. There is no way that any of these countries can actively protect even a small part of their archaeological heritage.

Maya polychrome vase

Why should sites need protection? While the Maya site apparently was destroyed for the convenience of a local company, most of the sites are destroyed for international commercial interests. Looters find valuable artifacts, which they sell to antiquities traffickers, who in turn sell the objects to private galleries, mostly in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. If you can get a Maya polychrome vase to New York, Sotehby's can auction it off for anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000. Make that an Egyptian statue, for sale in London or Tokyo, and you are talking millions of dollars. Now the rich art collectors aren't the ones out there looting sites in the jungle. Big bucks are dangled in front of poor local people, who are happy to destroy a site or two for the boost in income it brings.

Egyptian statue

In Columbia, the big targets are deep tombs (called "shaft tombs") whose offerings contain many objects of gold. There is a recognized occupation of tomb robber in the country; they are called "huaqueros" ("huaca" means shrine or tomb). The huaqueros are better at locating tombs than are archaeologists.

Huaquero at work, looting a tomb in Colombia

 Even though looting sites and tombs is illegal in most countries (but NOT in the U.S !!!), their governments cannot protect all the sites. If sites are going to survive, it is up to local people to protect them. Many governments, schools, and other organizations sponsor public education programs to enlist people in the task of appreciating and protecting their local archaeological heritage. I directed excavations in Yautepec, Mexico, an Aztec city that was located under a modern city. We gave lots of lectures at the local schools, and we participated in a program where 6th grade classes visited our

I'm talking to school kids in Yautepec

excavations every Friday to learn what we were doing and why the site is important. We excavated Aztec houses in two schoolyards in Yautepec, and hundreds of kids got a close-up view of how we were uncovering the city built by their ancestors. I'm talking to some elementary-school kids in the photo, and a U.S. undergraduate (Nili Badanowski) is screening dirt in the background.

Many people got the message: the ruins in and around town were built by the ancestors of the people of Yautepec. This is their history, their heritage, and they need to protect it. There are few written documents, so archaeology is the only way to learn about the city's past. In Yautepec, the local equivalent of the YMCA (actually, a government health and recreation center, IMSS) put up an exhibit of artifacts from the excavations, where everyone in town got a chance to see them (and, my daughters, Heather and April, went to summer camp there!).

Looters at a site in the United States

Looted site in Iraq

There is information about Yautepec on this website, or see my book, The Aztecs (3rd edition, 2012, Blackwell Publishers). For looting and the antiquities trade, check out some of these books:

Atwood, Roger
2004    Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World. St. Martin's Press, New York.

Brodie, Neil and Kathryn Walker Tubb (editors)
2002    Illicit Antiquities: The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology. Routledge, New York.

Renfrew, Colin
2000    Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership: The Ethical Crisis in Archaeology. Duckworth, London.

Cities outside of history?

Mayapan, a Maya city

Did cities exist in the New World prior to the European conquest? Of course they did! If you have any doubt, take a look at some of my books or my articles as posted on my website (and much other work on Mesoamerica and the Andes). But according to a new reference work, the Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Peter Clark, editor, 2013, Oxford University Press), either there were no cities in the ancient New World, or else those cities were not part of "World History." Hmmmmmm. I don't much like either choice.

The first section of that work, called "Early Cities," has five survey sections:

• Mesopotamia

  

  Calixtlahuaca, an Aztec-period city

• Cities of the Ancient Mediterranean
• Africa
• South Asia
• China

Where are the cities of the Aztec, Maya, or Inka? What about the Zapotec or the Moche, the Toltec or Tiwanaku, the Mixtec or Chimu? Would it have been that hard to solicit some chapters on these urban traditions? It would be hard to argue that there were cities in ancient Africa and South Asia, but not the ancient New World. Was this a deliberate exclusion of the New World as unwelcome in a volume on "world history," or was this just laziness and ignorance?

Tiwanaku, and Andean City

So I did some checking. The chapter "Introduction" (by Peter Clark) contains this sentence:

"in Latin America Mayan, Aztec, and Inca urban networks appear to have grown in the Yucatán and Guatemala, in the Mexico valley, and in present-day Colombia (see Ch. 20)."


So it looks like the editor, Peter Clark, does acknowledge "urban networks" in the New World (although they don't warrant chapters of their own). But take a closer look. What could he mean by the phrase "appear to have grown"? This seems to suggest that perhaps they did not grow (and, by implication, that these societies were non-urban). And the geographic terms show a real ignorance of

Tenochtitlan, Aztec imperial capital

the distribution of New World urban traditions. Maya cities thrived not only in "the Yucatan" (an archaic phrasing, apparently referring to the Mexican state of Yucatan, or perhaps the Yucatan Peninsula) and Guatemala, but also in Chiapas, Belize, and Honduras. The homeland of Aztec cities was the
"Valley of Mexico", not "the Mexico valley"; yes this is a minor point, but one term is correct and the other is incorrect. And the Inka did NOT flourish in Colombia. The Inka were based in Peru, and their empire (and its imperial cities) reached into Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, but NOT Colombia. Now maybe I am being overly-picky here, but I think the phrase quoted above shows a serious ignorance of New World societies, geography, and urbanism.

Machu Picchu, Inka royal retreat

The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History does not completely leave out Mesoamerica and the Andes. The chapter referenced in the quote above, chapter 20, is by Felipe Fernández-Armesto; the chapter is called "Latin America." The main focus of that chapter is Latin America AFTER the Spanish conquest, but Fernández-Armesto does begin with a competent section called "Indigenous traditions" that does review the Maya, Aztec and Inka urban traditions. This chapter is from a section titled "Pre-Modern Cities."

According to the scheme set out in this reference work, the New World joins "World History" only after

Monte Alban, Zapotec city

 1492, when the Europeans arrived. The native urban traditions are not worth chapters or sections of their own; rather, their only value is to set the scene for the development of the colonial societies after European conquest.

This isn't the only time I've seen works in the field coming to be known as "World History" that are ignorant of native New World societies. Perhaps this is the difference between comparative schemes by anthropologists (these are almost always truly world-wide in coverage) and those by historians (many such works see "history" as only pertaining to the western tradition, its antecedents, and sometimes places like Africa or Asia.)

To  my mind, the Wide Urban World covers the entire world, through time from the earliest cities to the present. If we really want to comprehend cities and urbanism, a broad perspective is essential. Archaeologists have long appreciated the value of an inclusive comparative framework, and scholars of contemporary urbanization are starting to look to ancient and premodern cities as a source of ideas to better understand cities and their problems today and in the future (I'll blog about that before long). In contrast, it seems like some scholars of "world history" have not yet gotten the news. Do you want to know, for example, about the role of cities in imperial expansion? Why not take a look at the ruins of Pikillakta and other cities built by the Wari Empire of the Middle Horizon Andes. This is only one of many examples of New World urbanism that can illuminate broader questions in ancient and modern society and urbanism, as part of the wide urban world.

Piquillakta, administrative city of the Wari Empire

Some sources on Pikillakta and the administrative cities of the Wari Empire:

 Isbell, William H. and Gordon McEwan (editors)
1991    Huari Administrative Structures. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Jennings, Justin (editor)
2010    Beyond Wari Walls : Regional Perspectives on Middle Horizon Peru. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

McEwan, Gordon
1996    Archaeological Investigations at Pikillacta, a Wari Site in Peru. Journal of Field Archaeology 23: 169-186.

McEwan, Gordon F.
1987    The Middle Horizon in the Valley of Cuzco, Peru: The Impact of the Wari Occupation of the Lucre Basin. BAR, International Series, vol. 372. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford.

Schreiber, Katharina J.
1992    Wari Imperialism in Middle Horizon Peru. Anthropological Papers, vol. 87. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

2001    The Wari Empire of Middle Horizon Peru: The Epistemological Challenge of Documenting an Empire Without Documentary Evidence. In Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, edited by Susan E. Alcock, Terence N. D'Altroy, Kathleen D. Morrison, and Carla M. Sinopoli, pp. 70-92. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Teotihuacan, Ancient Mesoamerican Metropolis

Here are the top ten reasons why Teotihuacan is the most important ancient city of the Americas.
 

View down the Avenue of the Dead, from the Pyramid of the Moon

 

(1) Teotihuacan was one of the earliest cities in the New World.

I hesitate to call Teotihuacan THE earliest city, for several reasons. First, that designation depends on one's definition of city and urbanism; and second, archaeologists continue to locate new cities and provide better dating for known cities. Nevertheless, Teotihuacan ("Teo" for short) was AN early city in central Mexico, certainly the earliest large city in the region. Teo was founded several centuries before Christ, and it reached its height between about 200 and 600 AD.

(2) Teotihuacan was one of the largest cities in the world.

Population estimates for Teotihuacan range from under 100,000 to as many as 200,000 residents, living in an urban area larger than 20 square km. Early in its period, Constantinople had over 400,000 residents, and by the end of Teo's height Chang'an in China had that many people or more. Teotihuacan was not far behind, and it was clearly the largest city in the New World.

(3) Teotihuacan was the most extensively planned ancient city in the New World.

Central Teotihuacan

After an initial period of settlement, the city of Teotihuacan was rebuilt following an orthogonal grid plan. Nearly every one of the several thousand buildings was lined up with the approximately North-South alignment of the "Avenue of the Dead." While I have written articles arguing that ancient urban planning was far more varied than just the grid plan (see article here), the degree of central political control implied by the Teo grid is impressive. The city's rulers clearly had considerable power to enforce their will, destroying irrigated farmland for urban development, and making all buildings conform to the main grid. Urban planning in ancient cities can be measured by the degree of coordination among buildings and spaces (very high at Teo), and by the area to which the planning is applied (again, large at Teo).

(4) Teotihuacan looked more like a modern city than other ancient cities did.

Phoenix

Of course past cities should be judged on their own merits, and their resemblance (or not) to modern cities is irrelevant to how we understand their operation and significance. But on the other hand, the resemblance of Teotihuacan to modern cities is striking, and that is an interesting observation. The major features that the city shares with U.S. grid-planned cities (such as Phoenix) include: its use of orthogonal grid planning; its large size; its overall spatial pattern, with big civic buildings in the center and low-rise residences spreading out for miles; and its location in a semi-arid environment where irrigation agriculture was important. So what do these similarities imply? Good question. Minimally, this is just one of many fascinating traits of Teotihuacan.

 

(5) Teotihuacan was the setting for a radical social experiment.

Apartment compound

Apartment compound

Teotihuacan stands out as radically different from most Mesoamerican cities along a number of social dimensions. First, the orthogonal planning is highly distinct. Second, the housing (large multi-family apartment compounds) is far more standardized and regimented than in other cities. Third, many of the artifacts seem greatly standardized. And fourth, we have virtually no information about the rulers of Teotihuacan. There are no sculptures or paintings of their faces, and archaeologists are not even sure which building was the royal palace. Many Teotihuacan scholars think that these features are evidence for a radical social experiment in regimented and anonymous living. From my perspective as an urban scholar, I am impressed by the complete divergence of Teotihuacan from older and established canons of Mesoamerican urban planning (I have an earlier post on this). Again, the urban layout points to a radical social change early in the city's history.

(6) Teotihuacan influenced later societies such as the Toltecs and the Aztecs.

The Teo feathered serpent evolved into the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl

The capital cities that followed immediately upon Teotihuacan's collapse--Xochicalco, Teotenango, Cacaxtla, Xochitecatl--all returned to ancient Mesoamerican principles of urban planning and layout. Their rulers apparently rejected the Teo innovations (grid planning, arranged around an avenue rather than a plaza, etc.). While some of my colleagues have claimed that the next really large city--Tula (height, AD 900-1100)--was a copy of Teotihuacan, in fact Tula fits in with those other cities listed above in following the basic Mesoamerican urban plan. The rulers of Tula evidently rejected the Teo innovations also. But when the Aztecs came along (they were immigrants from northern Mexico), they were really impressed with the ruins of Teotihuacan and Tula. While the Aztecs invented stories that their kings were descended from the kings of Tula, they looked to Teo as the origin of the universe. Several of the Aztec origin myths were set in Teotihuacan, and the names we use today (such as "Pyramid of the Sun" and "Avenue of the Dead") were in fact the names that the Aztecs gave to the ruined features of Teotihuacan. Aztec kings even went to excavate at Teo, and brought back Teo objects to bury as offerings at the major temple.

(7) Teotihuacan’s trading and conquests affected much of Mesoamerica.

Tikal (Maya city): the platform at left was built in Teo style

The foreign influence of Teotihuacan was greater than any other Mesoamerican city. First, Teo was capital of a small empire that conquered much of central Mexico. While this empire was far smaller than the later Aztec empire, two other kinds of Teo influence stretched farther afield than the Aztecs managed to go. Teotihuacan engaged in trade with most of the known parts of Mesoamerica. Its merchants or officials controlled the major obsidian quarries near Pachuca, and the distinctive green-tinted Pachuca obsidian was traded by Teotihuacan merchants to the Maya region and beyond. Indeed, even a central Mexicanist like me managed to excavate some green obsidian blades in the six months my wife and I worked at the Maya city of Copan in Honduras. And then another kind of Teo influence--architectural and royal styles--also spread throughout Mesoamerica, including the Maya realm. Teo style was the "in" style, the "Gangnam style," of its period. Kings all over Mesoamerica built temples in the distinctive Teo style, and Teotihuacan royal costume elements became the rage among Maya kings. No Aztec empire, trade, or stylistic influence spread nearly so far as that of Teotihuacan.

(8) Teotihuacan is one of the most extensively studied ancient cities in the Americas.

19th C. painting by José María Velasco

Countless archaeologists have worked at Teotihuacan over the decades. Formal archaeological work started in the nineteenth century. Mexican teams cleared much of the architecture along the Avenue of the Dead in preparation for the Mexican Olympic Games in 1968. René Millon and George Cowgill mapped the city in its entirety in the 1960s and 1970s.  William Sanders surveyed the surrounding countryside in the 1950s and 1960s. Many projects by Mexican, U.S., European, and Japanese archaeologists have uncovered the apartment compounds and temples of Teotihuacan. Rubén Cabrera has excavated counless buildings at Teo, and Linda Manzanilla has directed a varied program of high-quality recent fieldwork at the site. Several excavation projects have located royal tombs under the  main pyramids at the site. There are two major continuously-functioning laboratories at the site, one sponsored by the Mexican government and one by Arizona State University. My colleague George Cowgill is the preeminent Teo scholar today, and his publications give the best overviews of the site.

(9) Teotihuacan is a World Heritage Site visited my millions of tourists each year.

Tourists climb the Pyramid of the Moon

The importance of Teotihuacan is recognized all over the world, and millions of tourists visit the site each year. While this volume of visitors can damage the ruins, there are many benefits of public exposure. People learn about the Mexican past, about the work of archaeologists, and about the distinctiveness of a great ancient city. The site is an official UNESCO World Heritage site.

(10) I wrote my senior honors thesis on Teotihuacan

My first season in Mexico (at Tula)

Okay, so this is not really a reason for the greatness or importance of ancient Teotihuacan. But for me, writing a senior honors thesis on Teotihuacan (directed by George Cowgill at Brandeis University) was a transformative experience. Intellectually, that project stimulated and cemented my interests in Mesoamerican archaeology and in the study of ancient cities. I lived for a summer in San Juan Teotihuacan, a village built on top of the ancient city, and split my time between working in the Teo laboratory and doing fieldwork with William Sanders (and visiting Tula; see photo). I left Mexico that year in love with the country, the people, the food, the music, and (especially), the archaeology. And after several decades, I am still going back to central Mexico every year.

A Few Publications on Teotihuacan:

Cowgill, George L.
1997    State and Society at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 129-161.

2007    The Urban Organization of Teotihuacan, Mexico. In Settlement and Society: Essays Dedicated to Robert McCormick Adams, edited by Elizabeth C. Stone, pp. 261-295. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, Los Angeles.

2008    An Update on Teotihuacan. Antiquity 82: 962-975.

Manzanilla, Linda (editor)
1993    Anatomía de un conjunto residencial teotihuacano en Oztoyahualco. 2 vols. Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City.

1996    Corporate Groups and Domestic Activities at Teotihuacan. Latin American Antiquity 7: 228-246.

Millon, René
1992    Teotihuacan Studies: From 1950 to 1990 and Beyond. In Art, Ideology, and the City of Teotihuacan, edited by Janet C. Berlo, pp. 339-429. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Millon, René, R. Bruce Drewitt, and George L. Cowgill
1973    Urbanization at Teotihuacan, Mexico, Volume 1: The Teotihuacan Map, Part 2: Maps. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Sugiyama, Saburo
2004    Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership: The Symbolism of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Cambridge University Press, New York.

What are universal urban features?

1.Walled neighborhoods in Chang'an

What characteristics are shared by all cities, from the earliest to today, and around the world? Many of the features shared by all cities are not exclusive to cities or urban settlements. Things like housing, big buildings, wide streets, or social diversity are often found in villages and other non-urban settlements. Three features of cities seem to be true universals. By this I mean features that (1) are found in all known cities; (2) are often absent in non-urban settlements; and (3) have a major impact on life in cities. These three features are neighborhoods, urban services, and elites. There may be others that I haven't considered; let me know if you have ideas for non-trivial urban universals.

2. Neighborhoods (clusters) at La Joyanca

(1) Neighborhoods

For years I've been telling my classes that neighborhoods are one of the few urban universals. Figure 1 here shows the walled neighborhoods at the Chinese Tang city of Chang'an. Recent research of our urban group here at Arizona State University, has been targeting the neighborhood at cities through time. Archaeologists have woken up to the importance of urban neighborhoods, and this has become an active area of fieldwork and analysis; see the new book, The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial unit in Mesoamerican Cities. The clusters of houses at Classic Maya sites were neighborhoods; figure 2 here shows one example, the city of La Joyanca (from the chapter by Eva Lemmonier) Even semi-urban settlements have neighborhoods - see my post on this.

3. Bhaktapur neighborhood plaza

4. Model of a Bkaktapur shrine

Neighborhoods are often focused on key features such as a plaza, a water-source, or a temple. In the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur, for example, neighborhoods are formed around open plazas, often with water sources (fig.3). In addition, each neighborhood has one or more shrines. Our urban project has a small exhibit in the Museum of Anthropology at ASU, and the museum folks created a nice model of one of the Bhaktapur neighborhood shrines (fig. 4). Central features like this give neighborhoods a central focus for people to gather and interact on a daily basis.

(2) Urban Services

The next research project of our urban group is a study of urban services in premodern cities. In background reading for this project it occurred to me that urban services are another urban universal. When people live together in cities, they cannot take care of all of their basic social needs in the same way that rural people in villages can, and they also take on new needs that must be met in the city. Someone has to provide basic services, which include infrastructure (water, roads), education, commercial outlets, ritual, and places to gather. In modern cities, governments provide most of the urban services, but in medieval cities many services came from guilds, church groups, and private citizens. How does this work in premodern cities? And how are services affected by elites and inequalities? These are the basic questions we will be studying over the next few years. I will talk about our project in a future post (click here for some preliminary information). For now, I will just mention some basic services and how they intersect with neighborhoods.

5. Neighborhood temple in Calixtlahuaca

We are studying urban services through their facilities -- the places where they are provided. For the comparative study we have singled out three services that occur in most cities: markets/shops; temples; and assembly spaces. The small plazas and shrines of Bhaktapur are examples of neighborhood-level services in that city. Neighborhood-level service facilities can be widely distributed in cities, and typically there are many of them. But cities also have higher-level service facilities - that is, facilities that are larger and serve more people, and there are fewer of these features. Thus in Mesoamerican cities, there are often many small temples, distributed around the city (fig. 5), while there are only a few large central temples (fig. 6).

6. High-order temple at Palenque

7. Central plaza at Copan

Also, many cities have numerous small neighborhood plazas (fig. 3), but only one or two large, central plazas (fig. 7). For more information on our upcoming study of premodern urban services, click here.

(3) Elites

8. Medieval noble and beggar

My third candidate for an urban universal is elites. My claim is that in any society that has both cities and elites (that is, most complex, state-level societies), some or all of the elites will live in the city. There may also be rural-based elites, or elites who maintain multiple residences, but some elites will live in the city, and they will exert an influence over the lives of the non-elites. This is important, because in ancient societies, typically 5% or less of the population were in the elite class, and the small number of elite families had a disproportionate influence on urban life in cities. This claim also applies to modern cities, although the system of inequality and elites is radically different in contemporary western societies compared to premodern societies.

9. Elite and commoner house at Cuexcomate

Exactly how did urban elites influence city life in the past? There is probably variation among cities and areas, and this is one question we will investigate in our project. One very preliminary finding, from a small sample of cities, suggests that elite residences had better access to service facilities than commoner houses (surprise, surprise). But commoners living in the same neighborhoods as those elite residences had no advantages (in the distance they had to walk to get services).

While elites played important roles in ancient cities and societies, there has been surprisingly little comparative research on elites around the globe. Archaeologists usually identify elites by the size of their houses (fig. 9), and as the excavation and analysis of houses moves forward around the globe, we will learn more about ancient elites and their roles in cities.

Are there other urban universals beyond neighborhoods, urban services, and elites? Let me know if you have any suggestions. There is still a lot to learn about cities throughout history in the wide, urban world.

Drowned colonial churches in Mexico

Quechula, Chiapas, Mexico

 In keeping with the theme of historical towns being submerged under rising artificial lakes, I want to share two cases of "drowned colonial churches" in Mexico. These are from Richard Perry, a tireless recorder and describer of colonial architecture in Mexico. Richard has published several outstanding books on Spanish-Mexican colonial architecture. I list two of these below; see the website of Espanaña Press (which Perry runs) for other books and more information. I'm on one of his listservs, which means I periodically get a post or a link about some interesting feature of colonial Mexican art or architecture.

Richard Perry also has a very nice blog called ColonialMexico, where I found these incredible drowned churches. The first one (photo above) is the church from a Dominican mission in Quechula. IN the 1960s, the Malpaso hydroelectric dam across the Grijalva River flooded many communities, including Santiago Quechula with its mission.Drought conditions in 2002, however, lowered the lake level, exposing the mission church once again. In Perry's words, "

Men and women who had left the area as children returned as grandparents, arriving by canoe and celebrating the re-emergence with music, dancing and prayers.

Jalpa del Marqués

The second example is Jalpa del Marqués in Oaxaca, subject of a second blog post on ColonialMexico.Check out the description on Richard's blog.

Mexican colonial architecture is fascinating, and I love visiting the old churches and other buildings. I once worked several seasons in an archaeology lab in the sixteenth-century convent in Tepoztlan, and it was great.

Perry, Richard
1992    Mexico's Fortress Monasteries. Espadaña Press, Santa Barbara.

Perry, Richard
1997    Blue Lakes and Silver Cities: The Colonial Arts and Architecture of West Mexico. Espadaña Press, Santa Barbara.

Heuneburg

Aerial view of Heuneburg and the Danube River

Guest post by Manuel Fernández-Götz

Thanks to extensive research projects carried out in recent years, we now know that the first urban and proto-urban of centers Temperate Europe developed between the end of the 7th century BC and the 5th century BC in an area stretching from Závist in Bohemia to Bourges in central France. Amongst these ‘centers of power’ that preceded the Late Iron Age oppida by several centuries, the most intensively investigated site is the Heuneburg in southern Germany (Fig. 1). In the mid-5th century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote in his famous work Histories (II, 33): “The Istros [Danube] river arises among the Celts and the polis of Pyrene, cutting Europe across the middle.” It has been suggested that Pyrene, the polis mentioned here, is Heuneburg, and that this is the first time that a city in Central Europe is mentioned by name.

Greek pottery from Heuneburg excavations

While this reference cannot be proved, archaeologist have shown that the Early Iron Age Heuneburg was a substantial settlement that flourished politically and economically. Its residents had extensive connections with areas as far away as Etruria and the Greek colonies (Fig. 2). The most striking feature was the discovery of a mudbrick wall based on Mediterranean prototypes and probably erected in about 600 BC.

Artists reconstruction of the Heuneburg urban center

Burial mound at the site

For a long time it was thought that the settlement at Heuneburg was mainly confined to the 3 hectares of the central hilltop. However, new work in the last 20 years has radically changed this picture. More than just a small hillfort, in the first half of the 6th century BC we are looking at an enormous settlement of 100 hectares with an estimated population of around 5,000 inhabitants. The entire site was, in fact, divided into three areas: the citadel (hilltop plateau), the walled lower town, and the outer settlement (Fig. 3). Moreover, from the beginning the settlement at Heuneburg was surrounded by numerous burial mounds which served as last resting places for members of the social elite and their relatives (Fig. 4).

Monumental stone gate

The fortifications around the lower town were impressive, and a monumental stone gate was recently excavated at the site (Fig. 5). The extent of the settlement, the presence of imposing monumental structures as well as indications of significant differences in social status and specialised production, justifies categorising Heuneburg as a ‘town’, at least for the period of the mudbrick wall (c. 600 - 540 BC). But it is important to realise that the extent and the significance of the Early Iron Age site continued to change throughout its less than 200-year occupation. Indeed, the various building phases, fires, and constant restructuring are testimony to an eventful existence with dynamic social changes.

Some references in English:

Local painted pottery

Arnold, Bettina

2010    Eventful Archaeology, the Heuneburg Mud-B rick Wall and the Early Iron Age of Southwest Germany. In Eventful Archaeologies: New Approaches to Social Transformation in the Archaeological Record, edited by Douglas J. Bolender, pp. 176-186. SUNY Press, Albany.

Fernández Götz, Manuel A. and Dirk Krausse

2012    Heuneburg: First City North of the Alps. World Archaeology 5 (7): 28-34.

2013    Rethinking Early Iron Age Urbanisation in Central Europe: The Heuneburg Site and its Archaeological Environment. Antiquity (in press).

Early urbanization in Europe north of the Alps

Reconstructed fortification at Heuneburg

Greetings from Stuttgart, Germany. I have been attending a very interesting conference on Eurasian cultural developments between 800 BC and 400 BC. Today one of the conference organizers, Manuel Fernández-Götz, took me to see two early urban sites: Heuneburg and Heidengraben. They are in the state of Baden-Wurttemburg, within a couple of hours of Stuttgart by car. Heuneburg is a fascinating site and very important for understanding pre-Roman urban development in Europe north of the Alps. As we left the site was thinking I should post an entry on the site, but then I realized that Manuel could do a much better job than I could. He agreed, and his post will appear soon. So now I will just give a few impressions of the conference and the sites (and perhaps of the tasty local food), leaving the major description of Heuneburg to Manuel. Stay tuned.....

Here is some context. The old view of Iron Age Europe was that this was the setting for warlike barbarians who constantly fought one another until the Romans brought peace, civilization, and cities to the area. This view was based more on Classical authors than on archaeology. Julius Ceasar conquered many of these "barbarian" groups when he conquered Gaul in the 50s BC, and he described the larger settlements as "Oppida," meaning a large fortified settlement. Over the past century archaeologists excavated many Oppida sites, and many of these have urban functions that justify their classification as urban settlements (see my prior discussions of urban definitions:  Here  and Here ). Some of the archaeologists who contributed to this work were at the Stuttgart conference. including old hands like John Collis and Peter Wells and younger scholars like Manuel. The Oppida vary greatly, and this remains an enigmatic form of settlement.

Reconstructed gate at Heidengraben

The site of Heidengraben, which we visited today, is the largest oppida, but much of the settlement consisted of apparently empty land within a large walled enclosure. We could see some of the walls and formal gated entrances. Lost of people were out and about today, walking their dogs, cross-country skiing, and sledding on the slopes. The gate and everything else was covered with snow.

Gold jewelry from an elite burial, Heuneburg

Much more spectacular than Heidengraben is Heuneburg, which dates to the Early Iron Age, or Hallstatt period, centuries earlier. Excavations at Heuneburg long ago revealed fortifications, elite burial mounds called tumuli, imported goods and houses. But more recent work directed by Dirk Krausse (a co-organizer of the conference) has added some key attributes of social complexity and urbanism, including a very rich child burial (which suggests that wealth and status were inherited, not just acquired within an individual's lifetime); the existence of a very large "suburban" area of houses in walled compounds at the base of the fortified hill. Manuel Fernández-Götz and Dirk Krausse have written an article, now in press in the journal Antiquity, that argues for the urban status of Heuneburg. If the site was indeed an urban center, it would make it the earliest urban site north of the Alps. I agree with their evidence and interpretations, but I will let Manuel describe the site and its urban aspects in more detail in his upcoming post.

The conference explored urbanization, social complexity, political organization, and processes of individualization throughout Eurasia during the Early Iron Age (800-400 BC). It was fascinating and I learned a lot and got excited about these sites. My role was to give a talk on the concept of urbanism and how it is studied by archaeologists.

The conference participants were also given a guided tour of a fantastic museum exhibit, "The World of the Celts." This exhibit has many of the important early Iron Age finds that we saw in the slides of conferenece participants, including the gold jewelry pictured above.

One final observation at the end of an excellent trip to Stuttgart: The State of Baden-Wurttenburg really supports archaeology well. The citizens are very interested in their past, turning out in thousands to see the two museum exhibits on the Celts and visiting the sites in the region. The state cultural office has a staff of hundreds, carrying out excavations (with sophisticated and rigorous methods) mounting museum exhibits, and other activities.And one final, final observation: the food in this region is fantastic.


Here are a few sources on the Oppida, emphasizing English-language works:

Collis, John R.

1984      Oppida: Earliest Towns North of the Alps. University of Sheffield Press, Sheffield.

1997      The European Iron Age. Routledge, London.

Fichtl, Stephan

2005      La ville celtique: Les oppida de 150 avant J.-C. à 15 après J.-C. Revised ed. Errance, Paris.

Pitts, Martin

2010      Re-Thinking the Southern British Oppida: Networks, Kingdoms and Material Culture. European Journal of Archaeology 13:32-63.

Wells, Peter

2011      The Iron Age. In European Prehistory: A Survey, edited by Sarunas Milisauskas, pp. 405-460. 2nd ed. Springer, New York.

Woolf, Greg D.

1993      Rethinking the Oppida. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 12:223-234.