Early cities or large villages?: quantitative narratives on eneolithic trypillia mega-sites
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-10-02

During the 4th millennium BC a number of considerably big settlements have developed in the territory of modern Ukraine, thus constituting the biggest sites in Europe at that time. Mostly investigated only as single entities these “mega-sites” have never been considered thoroughly as part of the whole landscape of Trypillia coeval settlements. Some scholars have argued that these could have been examples of early formed urban centres (aka “proto-cities”) (Videiko 2004), others, instead, proposed that these were big villages (Bandy 2008) without a clear social hierarchy visible in site organization, structure and material culture. This research represents the first systematic study of the wider settlement pattern of known Trypillia sites and how this has been affected by (and affected) the appearance of mega-sites at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. Quantitative analyses are performed to describe trans-scalar patterns in the settlement data, and an interpretative narrative is proposed to explain these patterns and their relevance for the definition of the ‘urban’ nature of megasites. Concepts like ‘seasonality’ and ‘heterarchy’ are used to explain the development and the social organization of megasites, which are conceived as temporary gathering places where an ‘urban-like’ identity starts to develop.
The results suggest that Trypillia megasites can be defined as ‘urban forms’ within their coeval settlement and social context, but in the long-term perspective of the last six millennia they are “only” large/overgrown villages. The results of this research are not only shedding new light to the specific field of Trypillia archaeology, but they can also provide new insights to the wider investigation on the origins of global urbanism and human agglomeration dynamics.

Author: Dr. Nebbia, Marco - Department of Archaeology, Durham University (UK) (Presenting author)