Landscapes of preindustrial urbanism The use of the word landscape to describe the formation and infrastructure of cities seems to express contemporary preoccupations with the postindustrial urban condition. The Industrial Revolution is often seen as a turning point in the emergence of the urban landscape of the modern metropolis and the large city as commonly experienced today in the world is certainly dependent on a range of recent (or quite recent) breakthroughs in construction technology climate control communication and transportation. In this view urban landscapes are a historically late development and are therefore seen to embody an essentially modern and Western concept. But features associated with contemporary urban landscapes most notably the forms of human adaptation to and reshaping of the sites where cities develop and expand can also be found in preindustrial contexts in different time periods and geographical regions. Preindustrial urban settlements generally occupied land that had been used for other mostly productive purposes and their development involved complex and dynamic relationships with the management of natural resources. Such cities are traditionally studied as the centers of commerce trade and artisan production as well as the seats of secular and religious authorities; the essays in this volume to examine how the original clusters of agrarian communities evolved into urban formations Bridging remote sensing and worldviews: urban landscapes from a preindustrial perspective Georges Farhat PART I. EARTHWORKS: Space and structure in early Mesopotamian cities Jason A. Ur Landscape change and ceremonial praxis in medieval Rome from the Via Triumphalis to the Via Papalis Hendrik W. Dey What constituted Cahokian urbanism Timothy R. Pauketat PART II. WATERSCAPES: Hydraulic landscapes of Roman and Byzantine cities Jordan Pickett Monsoon landscapes and flexible provisioning in the preindustrial cities of the Indian subcontinent Monica l. Smith The Phnom Kulen capital a singular and early case of landscape construction in ancient Cambodia Jean Baptiste Chevance The weave of natural and cultural ecology Ekamrakshetra the historic temple town of Bhubaneswar India Priyaleen Singh PART III. FORESTRY: Xingu garden cities Amazonian urban landscapes or what Michael Heckenberger when the king breaks a town he builds another politics slavery and constructed urban landscapes in tropical West Africa J. Cameron Monroe.