| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Monica L. Smith, editor. The Social Construction of Ancient Cities. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 2003. Pp. xiii, 320. $45.00.

The definition of urbanism and the recognition of cities in the past are likely to be always a source of contention. In the first chapter of this collection, editor Monica L. Smith tries valiantly to deal with the problem of definitions, set out the book's theme, and pull all the disparate essays together. The main weakness, common to many edited volumes, is lack of consistent focus across contributions, while the main strength is that the individual essays present interesting case studies. The intent was to focus on ordinary households and how social interactions produce the archaeological record of ancient cities. However, lack of a clear definition of urban means that many different types of social relations are covered, losing the focus on how these ancient cities are "social constructions." Moreover, some contributions are concerned with origins and others with the workings of already extant sites, making the individual essays very different in purpose and in how they look at social interactions. Urban is defined so broadly that it becomes a useless concept. This is a problem of comparative social science, not just of this volume.

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