Journal of Urban Archaeology 11 (2025)

Sustainability has become a key factor in discussions about urbanism in our presentday world. How resilient are our current urban systems and practices? What factors are likely to infl uence urban success or failure? Archaeology is in the unique position of being able to offer an extensive record of case studies for the success or failure of large settlements extending back several thousand years. Through archaeological examples, we can search for regularities and patterns, but also for exceptions that do not necessarily fi t standard models and can offer insightful alternatives to mainstream narratives. This special issue of the Journal of Urban Archaeology brings together contributions that address the phenomenon of sustainability across a wide range of geographical and chronological contexts, from Copper Age Iberia to medieval Southeast Asia. The focus is on both environmental and social factors, and the intertwined relationships between them. Furthermore, we explore how certain settlement layouts (e.g. high-density vs. low-density urbanism) made past cities more or less resilient to external variables such as climatic and political changes, and what implications we might draw for present and future urban communities around the globe.

Archaeological Perspectives on Urban Sustainability: Issues and Reflections

Roland Fletcher and Manuel Fernández-Götz

Sustainable Giant-Sites? Resilience and Continuance in Large Low Occupation Density Settlements

Kirrily White and Roland Fletcher

Time, Sustainability and ‘Collapse’ in the Iberian Copper Age Mega-Sites

Leonardo García Sanjuán and Francisco Sánchez Díaz

An Agroecological Perspective on Early Urban Forms and their Sustainability in Western Eurasia

Amy Bogaard

Persistence as Sustainability? Exploring Urban Longevity in Southwest Asia and Egypt

Dan Lawrence, Israel Hinojosa-Balino, and Francesca Chelazzi

Were the Oppida Sustainable? Examining the Persistence and Provisioning of Late Iron Age Agglomerations in Temperate Europe

Manuel Fernández-Götz, Tom Moore, and Ian Ralston

Urbanism and Sustainability: Life with Water

Michael Leadbetter and Ruby-Anne Birin

‘Wildland-urban Interfaces’ from an Archaeological Perspective

Patrick Roberts, Sebastian Los, William C. Carleton, Ricarda Winkelmann, and S. Yoshi Maezumi