The Archaeology of Nucleation in the Old World explores the role of the built environment in expressing and shaping community organization and identity at prehistoric and historic nucleated settlements and early cities in the Old World. The spatial layout of large settlements results from the interaction of social, political, economic, and religious orders. Subsequent structural changes governed by the application, manipulation, and challenges of these orders yield a dynamic built environment which influences the processes of organization and identity formation. Taking advantage of advances in archaeological methods and theory that allow investigations of nucleated settlements to an extent and depth of detail that was previously impossible, the contributors to this volume address specific topics, such as how the built environment and location of activity zones help us to understand social configurations; how various scales of social units can be recognized and the resulting patterns interpreted; how collective actions contribute to settlement organization and community integrity; how changes in social relations are reflected in the development of the built environment; how cooperation and competition as well as measures to mitigate social and communication stress can be identified in the archaeological record; and how the built environment was used to express or manipulate identity.

About the Author
Attila Gyucha received his PhD from the Eoetvoes Lorand University (Budapest) in 2010. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia (USA). Gyucha studies the evolution of nucleated settlements from a cross-cultural perspective and is the editor of Coming Together: Comparative Approaches to Population Aggregation and Early Urbanization (2019). As the co-director of the Koeroes Regional Archaeological Project, his field projects explore early farming societies on the Great Hungarian Plain. ;

Roderick B. Salisbury received his PhD from the University of Buffalo (SUNY) in 2010. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Austrian Archaeological Institute (OEAI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on human-environmental interactions and takes a comparative approach to the spatial and social organization of settlements. He is co-director of the Neolithic Archaeological Soilscapes Koeroes Area project and Vice-Chair of the Editorial Board of the journal Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica.


Book Information
ISBN 9781803270906
Author Attila Gyucha
Format Paperback
Page Count 226
Imprint Archaeopress Archaeology
Publisher Archaeopress
Weight(grams) 821g