urbanism
urbanismI. Greek and Hellenistic
Urban units are to be distinguished not simply by the size of the community, but by its topographical organization, occupational pattern, and cultural sophistication. The formation of towns is not therefore simply a matter of the agglomeration of communities, but of the forging of a community of distinct character. Archaeologists have sometimes been too willing to call early bronze-age settlements towns as a result of overestimating the size of the community involved, but both the archaeological remains and the evidence of the Linear B tablets show that late bronze-age palace centres of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations were essentially urban units in their size, occupational diversity, and culture. Particularly important seems to be the role of the palaces as centres for the storage and redistribution of agricultural produce: it may not be...[The entire page is 3585 words long]
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