{"id":1788,"date":"2012-08-21T13:17:51","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T19:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1788"},"modified":"2014-07-04T09:31:30","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T15:31:30","slug":"archaeology-and-the-intercultural-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1788","title":{"rendered":"Archaeology and the Intercultural City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last June\u2019s Venice Seminar<\/a> frequently prompted me to think about what the \u201cdeep time\u201d perspectives of evolutionary psychology and archaeology can contribute to the conversation about intercultural place-making. \u00a0I\u2019ve argued that Evolutionary Psychology<\/a> might direct us to some cross-cultural common denominators of taste useful for shaping the form and aesthetics of the intercultural city. \u00a0This post looks at what the deep time perspective of Archaeology<\/a>\u2014a discipline\u00a0 committed to exploring the range of variation in the way that people live across time and space\u2014can contribute to the intercultural cities project.<\/p>\n

The urban archaeologist\u00a0Michael E. Smith<\/a>, along with his colleagues<\/a>\u00a0in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, has already done a bunch of heavy lifting in this regard.\u00a0 Michael\u2019s scholarly publications emphasize the importance of taking a comparative perspective<\/a> on the city as a way to better understand variation in urban form and the conditions and processes that produce urban prosperity, security, and resiliency. \u00a0His blog Wide Urban World<\/a> broadcasts these concerns to a popular audience. Smith problematizes concepts like urban \u201csustainability\u201d and considers whether sprawl<\/a>, residential clustering<\/a>, and other familiar characteristics of today’s cities are exclusively modern phenomena. \u00a0They aren\u2019t. \u00a0Cities in antiquity are both similar to, and different from, those of today. Michael justifies the contemporary relevance of archaeological work as well as anyone else by invoking a quote from Winston Churchill<\/a>: “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.”<\/p>\n

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Map of Ancient Rome, 1886 (Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

The particular question at the Venice seminar that got me thinking about archaeology\u2019s relevance to intercultural place-making was whether anything short of the shared human misery produced by a flood, tsumani, earthquake (recently experienced by northern Italians<\/a>) or other natural disaster is capable of bringing diverse groups of people together into a collaborative urban renewal project. \u00a0In his article\u00a0“Civilization in Color: The Multicultural City in Three Millennia<\/a>” Massachusetts Institute of Technology sociologist\u00a0Xavier de Souza Briggs<\/a>\u00a0compellingly argues that our best historical examples of well-functioning pluralist cities are ancient Rome<\/a>\u00a0and medieval\u00a0C\u00f3rdoba<\/a>. \u00a0Both were shaped by explicit commitments to cosmopolitan city-building. These commitments were driven, however, by autocratic rule. \u00a0Given autocracy\u2019s political distastefulness to us today, are there any historical examples of diverse, intercultural cities that were developed on democratic or communitarian grounds?<\/p>\n

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Historic Centre of C\u00f3rdoba, a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

The examples that occurred to me in Venice come from Pre-Columbian<\/a> North America.\u00a0 In an earlier academic life I researched and wrote about the ancient cultures that occupied sites in the American Bottom<\/a> and the\u00a0San Juan Basin<\/a>, specifically Cahokia<\/a> and Chaco Canyon<\/a>, respectively.These are American archaeology’s two best examples of Pre-Columbian urban (or at least near-urban, in the case of Chaco) development north of Mexico.\u00a0 Interestingly, both cultures flourished around the time that C\u00f3rdoba was enjoying its \u201cGolden Century,\u201d i.e., between AD 929-1031. \u00a0It’s always struck me that there was something in the air during this century that propelled cultures in North America and elsewhere towards long distance interactions and inspired local innovations in place-making, but that “something” is still rather elusive.<\/p>\n

The social meaning of Cahokian and Chacoan archaeological patterns isn\u2019t entirely clear. Archaeologists often deal with fragmentary data and, like all social scientists, use interpretive theory that’s been unconsciously shaped by all sorts of contemporary cultural biases, hopes, and desires.\u00a0 Thus, there are several different reconstructions of what ancient Cahokia and Chaco were like.\u00a0 In some models they are politically-centralized states run by kings who used terror (or at least the \u00a0threat of violence) to maintain social order. In other models they are communal undertakings based on shared, deeply controlling \u201cBig Ideas\u201d and forms of political power that are rather more fluid and tenuous.\u00a0 But even scholars preferring the latter scenarios (like myself) recognize that both cultures were organizationally quite complex<\/em>, perhaps of a kind unknown in history either before or after.\u00a0 Certainly, all scholars would agree that power and ritual at both Cahokia and Chaco were intertwined in significant ways.<\/p>\n

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Reconstruction of Cahokia: Six square miles, 120 mounds, population at least 20,000 (and possibly more) at its height<\/p><\/div>\n

The most interesting latest studies of both Cahokia and Chaco use empirical evidence to suggest that these phenomena–because of their geographical reach, which extended south to the \u00a0Valley of Mexico<\/a> and contact with the Toltec<\/a> Empire and other Mesoamerican<\/a> cultures–were not so much distinct political entities as \u201cpluralities\u201d or “hybridities\u201d characterized by great cultural diversity.\u00a0 That is, they were multi-cultural \u201cThird Spaces\u201d (sensu<\/em> Homi Bhabha<\/a>) in which ethnic diversity was integrated by distinctive new practices and ideologies. \u00a0The precise content of these integrative Big Ideas is tough to determine archaeologically. However, it’s a good bet that they were rooted in animism<\/a> and \u201cworld renewal\u201d rituals.\u00a0 More apparent is the social effects of these ideas. \u00a0Citizens of both Cahokia and Chaco successfully harnessed ethnic, linguistic, and other cultural diversities to make dramatic and unprecedented investments in place (e.g., monumental constructions like huge earthen mounds at Cahokia and over-engineered masonry “Great Houses” in Chaco, often arranged in spatial patterns that represented cosmological belief), long-distance trade networks and interaction spheres, and urban ways of living.\u00a0 What\u2019s personally gratifying for me is that these latest interpretations of Cahokia and Chaco emphasizing organized ethnic plurality are fully consistent with a description of Chaco I offered in American archaeology\u2019s flagship journal American Antiquity<\/em><\/a> exactly 15 years ago. \u00a0There, I interpreted Chaco as a particular form of community<\/p>\n

\u2026conceived in multiplicity and difference in an open social reality, and held together by a sense of community (a ‘being in common’ rather than a ‘common being’) that thrived on and celebrated social difference rather than subordinating difference to regulation and control.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Reconstructed Great House of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon<\/p><\/div>\n

The current challenge to Cahokian and Chacoan archaeology is to discover the unifying ideas and commitments that promoted this \u201cbeing in common\u201d and its associated forms of spatial belonging. \u00a0What were the norms of ethnic co-existence?\u00a0 How were they established? How did they encourage (or compel) what Briggs describes as the \u201ccross-cutting loyalties\u201d that bridge ethnic difference, promote collective action, and defuse social conflict?<\/p>\n

Even if we eventually discover these norms of ethnic co-existence there\u2019s no guarantee that Cahokian or Chacoan society and history will have any general lessons to teach us today (but see here<\/a> for one particular formulation of the lessons taught by Chaco). \u00a0It\u2019s also pretty unlikely that there are any Big Ideas available today capable of integrating the many diversities and complexities\u00a0 that currently surround us. That is, we lack large-scale, inclusive civilizing projects of Roman or C\u00f3rdoban character capable of generating\u00a0pluralist local identities that effectively bridge ethnic and religious differences. Still, there could be something in the distinction\u00a0(derived from\u00a0Jean-Luc Nancy\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0work on\u00a0The Inoperative Community)\u00a0<\/em>between \u201cbeing in common\u201d and \u201ccommon being\u201d\u00a0that can serve as a useful touchstone for theorizing the conditions and forms of spatial belonging that best serve the goals of the intercultural city.<\/p>\n

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Tactical Urbanism in the City of Ruins: Lincoln Street Art Park, Detroit<\/p><\/div>\n

Certainly, archaeology tells us that at least a few ancient cities were very successful in harnessing diversity\u2019s advantages. \u00a0Today, in the absence of a large-scale civilizing project to promote intercultural contact and pluralism, we can use little tactics of habitat<\/em> to accomplish the same goals. Housing<\/a> can be designed in ways that better integrate marginalized and disenfranchised groups into community. \u00a0Preserved historic buildings can be turned into low-income housing instead of upscale lofts.\u00a0 The hated (at least within New Urbanist planning circles) surface parking lot<\/a> can be strategically located to help promote and sustain informal urban economies that, more often than not, have a minority ethnic flavor.\u00a0 We can recognize and defend an aesthetic right to the city<\/a>. \u00a0We can better democratize access<\/a> to public space, markets and other spaces of day-to-day exchange. A variety of strategies for reclaiming urban space can be found within Tactical<\/a> and Everyday<\/a>\u00a0urbanism.\u00a0 Other spatial tactics and strategies for harnessing diversity\u2019s advantages likely await discovery in the ancient urban world. <\/em>\u00a0Some of these tactics and strategies for accommodating diversity\u2014at least given my experience watching what\u2019s happening at 9th<\/sup> and Colorado<\/a>\u00a0here in Denver\u2014won\u2019t easily pass muster with urban planners, property developers, city councilors, neighborhood associations, and citizens without some considerable persuading.\u00a0 \u00a0However, such efforts seem crucial if the contemporary city is to bridge cultural diversity and difference as successfully as our best examples from antiquity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last June\u2019s Venice Seminar frequently prompted me to think about what the \u201cdeep time\u201d perspectives of evolutionary psychology and archaeology can contribute to the conversation about intercultural place-making. \u00a0I\u2019ve argued that Evolutionary Psychology might direct us to some cross-cultural common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[22,8,18,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-general","category-intercultural-city","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-sQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1788"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3333,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788\/revisions\/3333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}