Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the Self-organizing LandscapeThe cities of West Africa's Middle Niger, only recently brought to the world's attention, make us rethink the 'whys' and the 'wheres' of ancient urbanism. They present the archaeologist with a novelty; a non-nucleated, clustered city-plan with no centralized, state-focused power. This book explores the emergence of these cities in the first millennium B.C. and the evolution of their hinterlands from the perspective of the self-organized landscape. Cities appeared in a series of profound transforms to the human-land relations and this book illustrates how each transform marked a leap in complexity. |
Contents
Transformed landscapes | 45 |
Accommodation | 101 |
Excavation | 144 |
Surveying the hinterland | 192 |
Comparative urban landscapes | 209 |
| 230 | |
| 251 | |
Other editions - View all
Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the Self-organizing Landscape Roderick J. McIntosh No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
African ancient archaeological archaeologists authority Azawad Bozo century ceramics chapter communities corporate groups cultural deep-time despotic diversity dunes dynamics early ecological elite emergence ethnic ex astra excavation fisherfolk flood floodplain Fulani function geokistics heterarchy Hierakonpolis hierarchy hinterland Historical Ecology Holocene human interaction Iron Age Jenne Jenne-jeno Jenne-jeno Urban Complex kilometers Konaré Lake Lake Chad Lake Débo landforms Late Stone Age Macina Mali Malian Mande Marka McIntosh Méma Mesopotamia meters Middle Niger Middle Niger basins Middle Niger cities Middle Niger urbanism millennia millennium BC millet mound Naqada Niger River Nile nyama occult occupation organization paleochannels phase transform diagram population proxy measures Pulse Model regional rice Sahara Sahel Sahelian satellite season self-organizing self-organizing landscape sequence settlement social society soils Somono specialists specialization square kilometers strategies subsistence surface survey sustainability symbolic Timbuktu tion Togola town unpredictability Upper Delta Urban Cluster Uruk variability West Africa Yahwist
Popular passages
Page 233 - Crumley. Carole L. 1979 Three Locational Models: An Epistemological Assessment of Anthropology and Archaeology. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory. Vol. 2. Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Pp. 141-73. New York: Academic Press.
Page 231 - MacDonald, A. Person, J. Polet, K. Sanogo, A. Schmidt, and S. Sidibe. 2001. "The Dia archaeological project: rescuing cultural heritage in the Inland Niger Delta (Mali).