Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:52:49.942Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban Scale Shifts since the Bronze Age: Upsweeps, Collapses, and Semiperipheral Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2015

Hiroko Inoue ,
Alexis Álvarez ,
Eugene N. Anderson ,
Andrew Owen ,
Rebecca Álvarez ,
Kirk Lawrence  and
Christopher Chase-Dunn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This is a study of the growth and decline of cities for the purpose of identifying those events in which they significantly increased in size. Significant changes in the scale of cities are important for understanding the long-term trend toward more complex and hierarchical human societies. We report the results of an inventory of cycles, upsweeps, and collapses of settlements in five separate interpolity systems. Upsweeps are instances in which the largest settlement in a world system significantly increases in size. Collapses occur when the size of the largest settlement greatly decreases and stays down for a significant period of time rather than rebounding. We use regional interpolity systems (world systems) rather than single polities or settlements as our unit of analysis. Because the accurate designation of sweeps requires interval scale measures, we are limited to those regions and time periods for which quantitative estimates of largest settlement sizes are regularly available. We find a total of 18 upsweeps and five downsweeps, and only two instances of prolonged systemwide settlement collapse. We also investigate whether or not the rate of cycles has increased over the long run, and we find that cycles of city growth and decline have not accelerated. We also find a greater rate of urban cycles in the Western (Central) System than in the East Asian System, which supports the usual notion that the Western city system was less stable than the Eastern city system.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , Summer 2015 , pp. 175 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association, 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Robert McCormick (1981) The Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Jared, Álvarez, Alexis, Anderson, E. N., Basmajian, Elisse, Blum, Dinur, Inoue, Hiroko, Jaworski, Christian, Khan, Alina, Lawrence, Kirk, Owen, Andrew, Roberts, Anthony, Suppatkul, Panu, and Chase-Dunn, Christopher (2013) “Comparing world-systems: Semiperipheral development and empire upsweeps since the Bronze Age.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, August 10–13. Appendix: www.irows.ucr.edu/cd/appendices/semipmarchers/semipmarchersapp.htm.Google Scholar
Ameling, Walter (2011) “The rise of Carthage to 264 BC,” in Hoyos, Dexter (ed.) A Companion to the Punic Wars. New York: Wiley-Blackwell: 39–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, David G. (1994) The Savannah River Chiefdoms. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Beaujard, Philippe (2010) “From three possible Iron-Age world-systems to a single Afro-Eurasian world-system.” Journal of World History 21 (1): 1–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chandler, Tertius (1987) Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C. (1988) “Comparing world-systems: Toward a theory of semiperipheral development.” Comparative Civilizations Review 19: 29–66.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C., and Willard, Alice (1994) “Cities in the central political-military network since CE 1200.” Comparative Civilizations Review 30: 104–32.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C., and Jorgenson, Andrew K. (2003) “Regions and interaction networks: An institutional materialist perspective.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 44 (1): 433–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C., and Lerro, Bruce (2014) Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C., and Inoue, Hiroko (2011) “Explanations of scale changes in settlement and polity sizes.” IROWS Working Paper #67. http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows67/irows67.htm (accessed January 17, 2014).Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, C., Manning, Susan, and Hall, Thomas D. (2000) “Rise and fall: East-West synchronicity and Indic exceptionalism reexamined.” Social Science History 24 (4): 721–48.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Hall, Thomas D. (1997) Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Diakonoff, Igor M. (1973) “The rise of the despotic state in ancient Mesopotamia,” in Diakonoff, I. M. (ed.) Ancient Mesopotamia. Sergheyev, G. M. (transl.). Wallufbei Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin Sandig: 173–203.Google Scholar
Diamond, Jared (2005) Collapse. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Roland (1995) The Limits of Settlement Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Go, Julian (2011) Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inoue, Hiroko, Álvarez, Alexis, Lawrence, Kirk, Roberts, Anthony, Anderson, Eugene N., and Chase-Dunn, Christopher (2012) “Polity scale shifts in world-systems since the Bronze Age: A comparative inventory of upsweeps and collapses.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 53 (3): 210–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieberman, Victor (2003) Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Volume 1: Integration on the Mainland. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liverani, Mario (2014) The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McAnany, Patricia A., and Yoffee, Norman, eds. (2010) Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability and the Aftermath of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Modelski, George (2003) World Cities: –3000 to 2000. Washington, DC: Faros 2000.Google Scholar
Morris, Ian (2010) Why the West Rules—For Now. New York: Farrer, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Morris, Ian (2013) The Measure of Civilization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nissen, Hans J. (1988) The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000–2000 BC. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pasciuti, Daniel (2003) “A measurement error model for estimating the populations of cities.” http://irows.ucr.edu/research/citemp/estcit/modpop/modcitpop.htm (accessed July 8, 2012).Google Scholar
Pasciuti, Daniel, and Chase-Dunn, Christopher (2003) “Estimating the population sizes of cities.” http://irows.ucr.edu/research/citemp/estcit/estcit.htm (accessed July 8, 2012).Google Scholar
Radner, Karen (2014) “The Neo-Assyrian Empire,” in Gehler, Michael and Rollinger, Robert (eds.) Imperien und Reiche in der Weltgeschichte, Teil 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag: 101–19.Google Scholar
Rozman, Gilbert (1973) Urban Networks in Ching China and Tokogawa Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
SESHAT: The Global History Data Bank. The Evolution Institute. http://evolution-institute.org/seshat.Google Scholar
Scheidel, Walter, and Morris, Ian (2009) The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shaughnessy, Edward L. (1999) “Western Zhou history,” in Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward L. (eds.) The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 292–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Charlotte Ann (2002) “Concordant change and core-periphery dynamics: A synthesis of highland Mesoamerican archaeological data.” PhD diss., University of Georgia.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael E. (2005) “City size in late postclassic Mesoamerica.” Journal of Urban History 31 (4): 403–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael E., Feinman, Gary M., Drennan, Robert D., Earle, Timothy, and Morris, Ian (2012) “Archaeology as a social science.” PNAS 109 (20): 7617–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stein, Gil J. (1999) Rethinking World-Systems: Diasporas, Colonies and Interaction in Uruk Mesopotamia. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Tainter, Joseph (1988) The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Turchin, Peter, and Nefadov, Sergey (2009) Secular Cycles. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Von Falkenhausen, Lothar (2006) Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius, 1000–250 BC. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, D. R., Kejzar, Natasa, and Tambayong, Laurent (2006) “Oscillatory dynamics of city-size distributions in world historical systems,” in Modelski, G., Devezas, T., and Thompson, W. (eds.) Globalization as Evolutionary Process: Modeling, Simulating, and Forecasting Global Change London: Routledge: 190–225.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, David (1987) “Central civilization.” Comparative Civilizations Review 17: 31–59.Google Scholar
Yoffee, Norman (1991) “The collapse of ancient Mesopotamian states and civilization,” in Yoffee, Norman and Cowgill, George (eds.) The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations. Tucson: University of Arizona Press: 44–68.Google Scholar