The ancient city

"Ancient cities have much to tell us about the social, political, religious, and economic conditions of their times - and also about our own. Ongoing excavations all over the world are enabling scholars to document intra-city changes through time, city-to-city interaction, and changing relations between cities and their hinterlands. As the essays in this volume reveal, archaeologists now know much more about the founding and functions of ancient cities, their diverse trade networks, their heterogeneous plans and layouts, and their various lifespans and trajectories."--Jacket.