Рет қаралды 42
Bisserska Gaydarska
Department of Archaeology, Durham University
Political organisation at the earliest low density, egalitarian cities in Eurasia:
a Trypillia megasite narrative”
The Trypillia megasites of Ukraine constituted the largest sites in 4th millennium BC Europe and were, in my view, the earliest low-density cities in the world. They raise profound doubts about the standard model of social evolution and the development of the first cities in the Near East. The megasite investigations in the last decade have also questioned the long-assumed nature of these sites as overcrowded permanent settlements with a village-type economy. Using the megasite of Nebelivka in Central Ukraine as a starting point, this paper will offer a) an alternative to the standard view of the hierarchical nature of megasites, and b) an over-arching egalitarian model of Trypillia political economy, developed on the basis of Graeber and Wengrow’s (2021) groundbreaking insights.