Cities and Urbanization in West Asia and North Africa

Urbanized society emerged for the first time in human history in ancient West Asia, and it formed a social structure in which the characteristics of each region were determined and centered on a city — a trait that can still be seen in societies worldwide today. The remains of these earliest cities , preserved through abundant archaeological records and numerous cuneiform texts written on clay tablets, provide voluminous data about the birth of urban culture, while the transformation of these centres can be traced over time, from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, via the Byzantine and Sasanian, to the modern day. This peer-reviewed book series is open to both monographs and collected volumes that focus on cities and urbanization in West Asia and its surroundings from ancient times up to the modern age. Encompassing a number of different disciplines, including archaeology, philology, history, anthropology, sociology, city planning, architecture, geology, and geography, this broadly inclusive forum looks to promote innovative studies into the cities, urban landscapes, and urban culture of West Asia in a way that overcomes both chronological and subject-related divides.