Four Lost Cities - Annalee Lewitz

Intro

• Long history of leaders prioritizing spectacles for astrological, political reasons over functionality and resilience in design of cities → sometimes disastrous results for inhabitants
• Mythology of the “lost city” obscures reality of how people destroy their own civilizations
  • Here, explore four key spectacular examples of urban abandonment: cities that didn’t just go missing, but has people deliberately leave
    1. Çatalhöyük, in modern-day Turkey
  • Founded in Neolithic times (9kya)
  • When abandoned, residents didn’t just leave the city, but urbanism overall → back to nomadic lifestyle
    1. Pompeii, Italy
  • Weathered many natural disasters even before Vesuvius eruption
  • Preservation → good picture of cosmopolitan culture
    1. Angkor, in Cambodia
  • Water systems all built to align with E-W axis for astrological reasons rather than best for drainage → tons of flooding issues
  • Final straw or demise = armies no longer able to command rebuilding of irrigation systems
    1. Cahokia, in modern-day Missouri
  • Built with abandonment in mind?

Çatalhöyük

• Inhabitants only a generation or two removed from nomadic life → first time “Where are you from?” is as important as “Who are your ancestors?”
• In excavation, can see layers of rebuilding of houses over generation
• Contrary to older theory, transition to urban lifestyle took many generations, did not just originate in Fertile Crescent
  • In other words, not analogous to IR
  • Ex. Took significant amount of time for “dairy line” to emerge in archaeological records
• Domestication not just of plants and animals, but of ourselves
  • Domesticity ≠ shutting out of nature, but more of filtering
  • Led to dawn of privacy, as people lived in more closed off quarters → created distinction btw private and public spaces
• Outbreaks of monumental architecture at tipping points of civilization transitions
  • Ex. Structure of Gobekli Tepe (200+ stone pillars, like Stonehenge but more complex)
  • A way to assert tie community to land/place more than people; coping mechanism for social crisis w development of collective identity
• Development of more abstract symbolism to enable social networks
  • Rebuilding of houses as a form of history, externalized memory?

At Çatalhöyük, focusing on a single home can also reveal a lot about the city as a whole because the Neolithic’s cutting-edge technologies were largely centered on domesticity: building homes from bricks, cooking, and crafting tools and art.

• Farming sustained the city and vice versa: urbanism born from reciprocal relationship
  • City → security, cultural enrichment, attachments with people beyond family (that shared interests)
• Idea of “lost city” or “civilization collapse” is not accurate to describe decline— rather, city underwent slow transition of people leaving
  • Immigration had just as many cultural challenges then!
  • Moved across from East Mound to West,
• Factors leading to abandonment:
  • 8.2k climate event— two glaciers melted, global sea level rise → climate became drier and cooler; unclear how much this affected food supply and decline of city, but likely played some role
  • Tension vs “aggressive egalitarianism” of city structure, where all houses were same size, as specialization, hierarchy, inequality developed (seen in West Mound structures)
  • Abandonment of some houses → physically more work for others to keep them from collapsing, eventually not worth it to try

Pompeii

• Cultural influence of Africa (esp Egypt) evident in paintings; city inhabited by both Romans and people who lived their before conquest
• City life dominated by the street (rather than the home)
• Strong influence of women in the city— could not vote or run for office, but could own property, be entrepreneurs
  • Ex. Bathhouse of Julia Felix (one of only named citizens!)
  • Under Nero, women → bigger role in theater
  • Theater in general → key venue for promoting social change in cities like Pompeii
• City composed of Roman elite, citizens, and slaves + liberti (freedmen, released from slave labor by owners, usually stayed on to work with estate); surprising degree of social mobility for liberti, though not complete
• Pompeii in time of transition → retail; over 160 tabernae (restaurants/bars), likely frequented by vast number of socioeconomic “middlers” (incl liberti)
  • May have accounted for about 75% population
  • Many tried to portray “elite” lifestyle to overcome negative stereotypes
• Evidence of standardized cart sizes and driving habits from grooves and dents on roads, stepping stone
• Studying how things like toilets of the Forum worked → Roman moral authority not concerned with privacy, covering up, but rather regulating how people moved through public spaces
  • Study of graffiti → importance of sexual position to social status
• Abandonment of Pompeii = example of what happens when people are forced to leave their city without a choice
  • Traumatic event in Roman history overall— not discussed a lot, generational silence?
  • Flow of refugees to nearby towns → tried to rebuild, many remained with community
  • Why wasn’t city rehabilitates? Extreme environmental disaster, would have been nearly impossible with amount of ash, toxicity

Angkor

• Unlike above cases, Khmer culture not lost/dead— mix of Theravada Buddhism w centralized state power continues to influence Cambodian life
• Tropical cities harder to recognize bc made of less permanent materials than others— plant materials, etc.; design = more of urban sprawl than dense clusters
  • Recent use of lidar → able to pick up on urban planning still present in forest floor
  • Can also study other forms of anthropogenic geomorphology: use of forest fire to cultivate human-preferred plants, addition of fertilizer
  • Climatically, Cambodia swings between extremes of hot/dry and extremely rainy due to two monsoon seasons
• Origins of city?
  • Draw of religion/ritual— infusion of Hinduism, Buddhism, indigenous culture
  • Benefits of the organized planning of rice fields and settlements
  • Benefits of centralized water infrastructure → farming (feedback loop of more people → more labor → need for and ability to build larger water systems)
• East and West Barays = huge reservoirs, built several centuries apart?
  • Required immense labor to build → indication of debt slavery that underlay much of the urbanization; pulled from labor sources across empire
  • Beyond debt slavery, concept of indebtedness permeated culture

  Labor was Angkor’s most valuable asset.

  • Building of West Baray (second, larger) ensured political stability by by controlling labor force— uncertain whether ultimate purpose was ceremonial or functional
  • Women → directed farming efforts in regions outside of temples too
• Temples = centers of neighborhoods full of trade, farming, textile manufacturing, other domestic tasks
  • “Taxes” paid in labor
  • Not much centralized economic control— trade based more on barter, exchanges of various foreign and local currencies
• French imperialism & exolorer’s acxount in 1860 → myth of the “lost city,” idea that only Europeans could be trusted to study it
  • In reality, city never stood empty even when royal family left in 15th c (likely due to political reasons, to move capital near allies?)
  • Also infrastructure problems around barays
• Factors in decline of the city…
  • Undermining of debt/patronage system by J7, who began seizing property, forcing people off land → loss of labor
  • Climate fluctuations (droughts followed by monsoons) → overwhelmed water infrastructure
  • Rather than a sudden collapse, “slow apocalypse that overtook Angkor as a series of economic setbacks exacerbated by environmental crisis.”
  • Ruling class, religious elites may have left city, but laborers stayed behind

Cahokia

• Immigrant sanctuary, known for impressive mound structures, but plaza at heart of city life
• Devoted more to public life and its transformative power than trade
• In one of most fertile lands in North America
  • Cultivated not maize but a variety of lost crops (domesticated at the time, now rewilded) such as goosefoot, maygrass, erect knotwood
  • May not have had Western concept of landownership, but still distinct exclusive land use rights and strictly demarcated plots

  The diversity and size of Cahokia’s farms were every bit as stunning as its monumental mounds, and arguably more democratic.

• Closing up ceremonies → special rituals for ending life of housing/buildings (like they did in Çatalhöyük!)
  • “Sealed up” up old home, with old objects, clay, etc. → often rebuilt right over it
  • Indicated that human housing was meant to be temporary, unlike mound and pit structures
• Eras of city marked by orientation of houses: first, courtyards facing small and plazas; then on strict N-S grid (coincided with biggest population); then back to smaller courtyards
  • Indicated social transformation— middle stage = more stratified, centralized; then rejected in third → retreat to own neighborhoods and rituals

  A plurality of plazas might point toward a democratizing current in Cahokia’s public culture, too.

• Overall, idea that cities have “peak” phase followed by “collapse” = misconception based on Western patterns
  • Urban civilizations —> no set developmental pattern, not necessarily organized around market principles
  • Can be adaptive to disperse into smaller villages for whatever reason
  • Jared Diamond’s Collapse problematic in many ways
  • Human societies more resilient than settlements
  • Perhaps can look at cities as ecosystems in constant flux, cycles of centralization and dispersal
• Much still unknown about political structures and conflict of Cahokia
  • During second period (centralized), perhaps more of a heterarchy than monarchy— many groups making decisions and governing themselves
  • Evidence of large human sacrifices, involved in ceremonies and celebrations— could have lead to resentment of ruling class?
  • Fragmentation occurs as individuals become less tied to place; practices tying people togetherv
• Abandonment of Cahokia → dramatic phase of migration, perhaps origins of Osage and Siouan tribes

Conclusion

• Examples above offer insight and warnings into future of modern cities!
• Resilience of communities and people beyond settlements
• Value of labor, and risks of an unhappy working class → fragmentation
• “If our political systems can’t address the twin problems of climate and poverty, there will be more food and water riots, as well as global wars over natural resources. The costs of city life will far outweigh the benefits, sparking mass migrations of people seeking new homes—and more international conflicts.”