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Science 31 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5842, p. 1188
DOI: 10.1126/science.1138728
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Brevia

Early Urban Development in the Near East

Jason A. Ur,1* Philip Karsgaard,2 Joan Oates3

It has been thought that the first cities in the Near East were spatially extensive and grew outward from a core nucleated village while maintaining a more or less constant density in terms of persons or households per unit of area. The general applicability outside of the Near East of this southern Mesopotamian.derived model has been questioned recently, and variations from it are increasingly recognized. We can now demonstrate that such variation was present at the beginnings of urbanism in the Near East as well.

1 Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
2 Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Old High School, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh EH1 1LT, UK.
3 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jasonur{at}fas.harvard.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)