How do archaeologists study early urban life? Institutions, generative processes, and urban order

The concept of urban order is important for research in urban sustainability science. I review the concepts and methods used by archaeologists to address the question of what holds early cities together. Archaeologists are starting to come around to the standard interpretation of urban order in the social sciences: urban order is created and maintained by the operation of two types of social forces: institutions (top-down forces) and generative processes (bottom-up forces). I review the changes in archaeological thinking that led from obsolete and inadequate models of social order (statism and agency) to the emerging current understanding. I discuss the concept of institutions and provide a new archaeologically-useful definition, and I describe five types of early urban institutions (political, economic, political economy, social, and religious). I then discuss three types of generative process: population/demography, self-governance, and self-coordination. These developments in the archaeology of urbanism have two benefits. They help archaeologists produce better models and interpretations of past cities; and, they help other urban scientists understand the deep history of cities and urban life. This approach allows new research findings on ancient cities to contribute to urban sustainability science today. What holds cities together? That is, how do city residents create and maintain a level of security, predictability, and cohesion that permits a city to flourish and persist through time? These are crucial questions for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11, “Sustainable Cities and Communities,” and for the New Urban Agenda [1–3]. A recent United Nations report notes that progress on the Sustainable Development Goals needs to be based on solid scientific and social scientific data. Furthermore, progress requires input from countries in the developing world and data from cities in those countries [4]. I argue that this broader urban perspective will remain incomplete without input from the growing body of scientific findings on past cities and early urban development. In this paper I pursue this approach through a focus on urban order. If archaeologists and historians can determine the nature and sources of social order in early cities, this knowledge has the potential to illuminate a number of issues in urban sustainability science today.