The Limits of Settlement Growth
The Limits of Settlement Growth
$35.00
USDIn this study Roland Fletcher argues that the built environment becomes a constraint on long-term settlement development. He reviews worldwide settlement growth over the past 15,000 years in the light of the limits imposed by buildings, layouts and forms of communication, and concludes with a major discussion of the great transformations of human settlements--from mobile to sedentary, sedentary to urban, and urban to industrial. This ambitious contribution to archaeological theory has implications for the future of urban settlement.
- Explanatory overview of 15,000 years of settlement growth
- Develops a theoretical infrastructure
- Fully illustrated
Reviews & endorsements
"This handsome and well-produced volume is densly written but very important to consider." Journal of Anthropological Research
"...those interested in urbanism will gain from Fletcher's perspectives." Choice
"...this book is important; it is Big Picture archaeology at its best and a provocative and stimulating proposal worthy of consideration." John E. Robb, American Anthropologist
"...it's not just for archaeologists: anyone interested in cities should read it. ...It's a great, useful, hopeful book. Useful for scholarship, hopeful for planning." --H-Net Review
Product details
July 2007Paperback
9780521038102
304 pages
243 × 168 × 17 mm
0.491kg
6 b/w illus. 3 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Summary
- Part I. Theoretical Context: The Role of the Material as Behaviour:
- 1. Archaeology, settlement growth and the material component of human behaviour
- 2. The material as behaviour
- 3. A hierarchy of social explanation: locating the material
- Part II. The Limits of Settlement Growth: Behavioural Stress and the Material Management of Community Life:
- 4. The behavioural parameters of interaction and communication
- 5. Settlement growth trajectories
- 6. Settlement growth transitions and the role of the material
- Part III. Implications: Transformations and Constraints of Community Life:
- 7. The development of sedentism
- 8. The development of agrarian and industrial urbanism
- 9. Future urban growth
- Technical notes
- References
- Index.
