“Elephants for Want of Towns”: Archaeological Perspectives on West African Cities and Their Hinterlands

Monroe, J. Cameron

doi:10.1007/s10814-017-9114-2

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 114 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The division of a single 'urban' site into a composite of divided areas has been recognized in the Islamic oases centres for example, which can be regarded as 'composite cities' (Kostof 1989, 120). The composite groupings of divisions to make agglomerated urban centres has also been observed at Benin in West Africa (Monroe 2018). The 'town-and-land' model from medi eval Spain also shows an interesting parallel of the ways in which elements of communities could be connected across urban and rural space (Fernández-Götz and Garrido 2019).…”

Section: Analogies For Iron Age 'Empty' Urban Spacesmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…There are some similarities to the way in which the multipolar complexes like Bibracte or Bourges included enclosed and unenclosed elements that were spatially separated. Similar to the phenomenon in Iron Age Europe, the process of expansion of the complex at Jenné-Jeno took place as craft specialization and long-distance exchange were increasing, although -as seems the case with some of the Iron Age European centres -evidence for social hierarchy is scarce despite this and other centres in the region being undeniably 'urban' (Monroe 2018).…”

Section: Analogies For Iron Age 'Empty' Urban Spacesmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…At Jenné-Jeno (Mali), which developed over the first millennium ad, at its greatest extent a central settlement of 33 ha was accompanied in close proximity by c. twenty-five other settlement foci in a 1 km radius. At least part of this complex had a wall defining the main mound (Monroe 2018), but these settlements were interrelated in what has been called a 'poly-nucleated sprawl' with a population claimed to have been c. 10,000-22,000 (S. K. McIntosh 1999; Monroe 2018) on all the mounds (totalling c. 137 ha). This is based on densities of between c. 97 and 195 people per hectare, derived from ethno graphic comparison (S. K. McIntosh 1999, 73).…”

Section: Analogies For Iron Age 'Empty' Urban Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Bringing the Country to Town: ‘Rurban’ Landscapes in Iron Age Europe

Moore¹,

Fernández-Götz²

2022

Journal of Urban Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Bringing the Country to Town'Rurban' Landscapes in Iron Age Europe ABSTRACT Research on Iron Age agglomerations has a long tradition, but only recently have the environs of these temperate European central places begun to attract greater attention. Expanding the focus from site cores to their wider landscapes challenges the traditional dichotomies of rural and urban. This can also be observed in the internal structure of many complexes, which, despite their complexity and manifold functions, often included rural-like settlement structures. Here, we argue that the concept 'rurban' encapsulates the resemblances many Iron Age centres had with elements of farmed landscapes, and that they should be considered within the framework of low-density urbanism. We argue that comparative analogies help to expand our interpretative frameworks, while new fieldwork strategies may lead us to a better understanding of the use of space within these agglomerations.

show abstract

Section: Analogies For Iron Age 'Empty' Urban Spacesmentioning

confidence: 73%

Section: Analogies For Iron Age 'Empty' Urban Spacesmentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: Analogies For Iron Age 'Empty' Urban Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Bringing the Country to Town: ‘Rurban’ Landscapes in Iron Age Europe

Moore¹,

Fernández-Götz²

2022

Journal of Urban Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Emergent, or re-emergent, urbanism is recognized as a key characteristic of the Middle Ages (e.g. Christopherson 2015;De Weerdt 2013;Hodges 2012;LaViolette and Fleisher 2009;Kaner and others 2020;Fleisher 2010a;Jervis 2016;Monroe 2018;Sindbaek 2007;Smith 2006, Tys 2018, being endemic of the period as an 'age of intensity' (Moore 2016). However, to paraphrase Geraldine Heng (2014, 240), we suggest that urbanism took a range of forms within the Middle Ages, as well as between the Middle Ages and other periods; as Julia McClure (2015, 616) states 'in our age of multiple modernities, we must explore the history of our multiple medi evalisms' .…”

Section: Introduction: Why Consider 'Emptiness' In the Medi Eval World?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Archaeology of Emptiness? Understanding Open Urban Spaces in the Medieval World

Jervis¹,

Cembrzyński²,

Fleisher³

et al. 2021

Journal of Urban Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ ReuseThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) licence. This licence allows you to remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, and any new works must also acknowledge the authors and be non-commercial. You don't have to license any derivative works on the same terms. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

show abstract

“…Urbanism is a popular subject in archaeology. Cities and towns are one of the hallmarks of social complexity, as centers of innovation, wealth accumulation, commerce, and both vertical and horizontal differences (e.g., Monroe 2018 ). But urban centers are also combustion sites for epidemic outbreaks as we have already seen all over the world with the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Epidemics in Ancestral Yorùbá Towns and Cities: “Sacred Groves” as Isolation Sites

Ogundiran

2020

Afr Archaeol Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The COVID-19 pandemic is firing up our imagination about how to account for the past epidemics in archaeological contexts. This essay is a reflection on some of the historical cases of epidemic outbreaks in Yorùbá history, and what we can learn from social memory, oral traditions, and recent eyewitness accounts on how microbial attacks were managed in ancestral Yorùbá urban centers. Malignant microbes usually thrive in the kind of settlement configurations-dense towns and cities-that supported the preferred sociopolitical organization among the Yorùbá for over a millennium. Sacred groves were incorporated into the ancestral Yorùbá urban planning. They served many roles, including as isolation centers for managing epidemic outbreaks. Such isolation sites are difficult to identify in archaeological contexts without the aid of historical sources. However, contemplating how these special spaces were embedded in the past Yorùbá cultural lives could broaden our imagination of social regeneration processes in times of crisis (e.g., infectious disease).

show abstract

“Elephants for Want of Towns”: Archaeological Perspectives on West African Cities and Their Hinterlands

Cited by 18 publications

References 114 publications

Bringing the Country to Town: ‘Rurban’ Landscapes in Iron Age Europe

Bringing the Country to Town: ‘Rurban’ Landscapes in Iron Age Europe

The Archaeology of Emptiness? Understanding Open Urban Spaces in the Medieval World

Managing Epidemics in Ancestral Yorùbá Towns and Cities: “Sacred Groves” as Isolation Sites

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About