ABSTRACT
Ancient Cities surveys the cities of the Ancient Near East, Egypt, and the Greek and Roman worlds from the perspectives of archaeology and architectural history, bringing to life the physical world of ancient city dwellers by concentrating on evidence recovered from archaeological excavations. Urban form is the focus: the physical appearance and overall plans of the cities, their architecture and natural topography, and the cultural and historical contexts in which they flourished. Attention is also paid to non-urban features such as religious sanctuaries and burial grounds, places and institutions that were a familiar part of the city dweller's experience. Objects or artifacts that represented the essential furnishings of everyday life are discussed, such as pottery, sculpture, wall paintings, mosaics and coins. Ancient Cities is unusual in presenting this wide range of Old World cultures in such comprehensive detail, giving equal weight to the Preclassical and Classical periods, and in showing the links between these ancient cultures.
User-friendly features include:
- use of clear and accessible language, assuming no previous background knowledge
- lavishly illustrated with over 300 line drawings, maps, and photos
- historical summaries, further reading arranged by topic, plus a consolidated bibliography and comprehensive index
- new to the second edition: a companion website with an interactive timeline, chapter summaries, study questions, illustrations and a glossary of archaeological and historical terms.
Visit the website at https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9780415498647/
In this second edition, Charles Gates has comprehensively revised and updated his original text, and Neslihan Yılmaz has reworked her acclaimed illustrations. Readers and lecturers will be delighted to see a new chapter on Phoenician cities in the first millennium BC, and new sections on Göbekli Tepe, the sensational Neolithic sanctuary; Sinope, a Greek city on the Black Sea coast; and cities of the western Roman Empire. With its comprehensive presentation of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cities, its rich collection of illustrations, and its new companion website, Ancient Cities will remain an essential textbook for university and high school students across a wide range of archaeology, ancient history, and ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and classical studies courses.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |10 pages
Introduction
part One|192 pages
Cities of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean: Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age
chapter Chapter 1|17 pages
Neolithic towns and villages in the Near East
chapter Chapter 2|22 pages
Early Sumerian Cities
chapter Chapter 3|15 pages
Mesopotamian cities in the late third and second millennia BC
chapter Chapter 4|11 pages
Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization
chapter Chapter 5|20 pages
Egypt of the pyramids
chapter Chapter 6|20 pages
Egyptian cities, temples, and tombs of the second millennium BC
chapter Chapter 7|20 pages
Aegean Bronze Age towns and cities
chapter Chapter 9|14 pages
Cypriots, Canaanites, and Levantine trading cities of the Late Bronze Age
chapter Chapter 10|22 pages
Near Eastern cities in the Iron Age
chapter Chapter 11|14 pages
Phoenician and Punic cities
part Two|104 pages
Greek Cities
chapter Chapter 12|14 pages
Early Greek city-states of the Iron Age (eleventh to seventh centuries BC)
chapter Chapter 13|9 pages
Archaic Greek cities, I
chapter Chapter 16|17 pages
Athens in the fifth century BC
chapter Chapter 17|17 pages
Greek cities and sanctuaries in the Late Classical period
chapter Chapter 18|21 pages
Hellenistic cities
part Three|120 pages
Cities of Ancient Italy and the Roman Empire