If Urban Population is so Important, Why Don't More Archaeologists Measure it?

This post consists mostly of a passage from chapter 3 of my book, Urban Life in the Distant Past. The book will be released in February or March, 2023. This passage is my answer to the question posed in the title.  Just for fun, I include here a table from that chapter. For the sample of early cities that I use as case studies, the table compares examples in the New World and Old World. Now, this is not a great sample for analysis (see the book on this), but it does show something rarely discussed in a systematic form. Early cities were denser in the Old World. But, it turns out that the median population size is very similar! This surprised me, and it is possible that it derives from the small sample size of my case study group. 

From chapter 3:

If population is so important, why have archaeologists been so resistant to measure or estimate past populations? When I tout the importance of population estimates to my colleagues, I typically get replies like this: “Archaeological population estimates often rest on so many uncontrolled variables and assumptions, that they cannot be meaningfully sustained.” But just about EVERY social interpretation of past society by archaeologists rests on similar chains (or cables) of what can be called poorly-controlled variables and assumptions (Chapman and Wylie 2016). If we were to extend this evidentiary standard to other realms, archaeologists would have to pack up and go home; we would not be able to say anything at all interesting about past societies. I cannot accept this commonly-offered reason for the resistance to demographic estimates by the very same archaeologists who readily employ parallel assumptions to make inferences about other past phenomena, whether social structure, religion, or economics. The reticence of my colleagues to population estimates has deeper roots.

 Most directly, the anti-quantitative and anti-science turn in archaeology (Chapter 1)—excluded demography and population as topics worthy of study. The broad spread of such ideas throughout the discipline (at least for the archaeology of complex societies) resulted in the omission of demography from many graduate training programs in archaeology. Beyond this, much of the hesitation to engage in population estimates from fragmentary remains probably derives from the general skepticism about the simplification required for comparative analysis (Chaper 1). Demographic reconstruction requires a complex empirical reality to be reduced to a small number of measures, and some archaeologists object to such simplification on principle. Also, an operation like population estimation requires that many uncertain parameters (e.g., household size or occupancy rate,)—and the methods of their derivation and analysis—be made explicit before estimates can be generated. Again, this level of detail is avoided by some archaeologists, in favor of grand, abstract accounts of the past (Chapter 1). 

 Nevertheless, some archaeologists have forged on, developing methods and concepts for reconstructing past populations from survey and excavation data. It is unfortunate that it has taken several decades for early work in archaeological population estimation (Hassan 1981) to be followed up and extended (Berrey et al. 2021; Drennan et al. 2015; Ortman 2016; Whitelaw 2004). Thankfully, there are signs of a renewal of interest in rigorous population estimation (Bernardini and Schachner 2018; Chirikure et al. 2017; Hanson and Ortman 2017; Smith et al. 2019). As part of an effort to promote demographic research in the study of premodern cities, I have assembled data on the population, area, and density of each of my case studies (see below). 

References 

 Bernardini, Wesley and Gregson Schachner 2018 Comparing Near Eastern Neolithic Megasites and Southwester Pueblos: Population Size, Exceptionalism and Historical Trajectories. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 8 (4): 647-663.

 Berrey, C. Adam, Robert D. Drennan, and Christian E. Peterson 2021 Local Economies and Household Spacing in Early Chiefdom Communities. PLOS ONE 16 (5): e0252532.

 Chapman, Robert and Alison Wylie 2016 Evidential Reasoning in Archaeology. Bloomsbury Press, New York.

 Chirikure, Shadreck, Thomas Moultrie, Foreman Bandama, Collett Dandara, and Munyaradzi Manyanga 2017 What Was the Population of Great Zimbabwe (CE 1000 – 1800)? PLOS-One 12 (6): e0178335. 

 Drennan, Robert D., C. Adam Berrey, and Christian E. Peterson 2015 Regional Settlement Demography in Archaeology. Eliot Werner Publications, Bristol, CT. 

 Hanson, John W. and Scott G. Ortman 2017 A Systematic Method for Estimating the Populations of Greek and Roman Settlements. Journal of Roman Archaeology 30: 301-324. 

 Hassan, Fekri A. 1981 Demographic Archaeology. Academic Press, New York. 

 Ortman, Scott G. 2016 Why All Archaeologists Should Care about and Do Population Estimates. In Exploring Cause and Explanation: Historical Ecology, Demograhy, and Movement in the American Southweset, edited by Cynthia L. Herhahn and Ann F. Ramenofsky, pp. 103-120. University Press of Colorado, Boulder. 

 Smith, Michael E., Abhishek Chatterjee, Sierra Stewart, Angela Huster, and Marion Forest 2019 Apartment Compounds, Households, and Population at Teotihuacan. Ancient Mesoamerica 30 (3): 399-418.

 Whitelaw, Todd 2004 Estimating the Population of Neopalatial Knossos. In Knossos: Palace, City, State, edited by Gerald Cadogan, Eleni Hatzaki, and Adonis Asasilakis, pp. 147-158. British School at Athens, London.