Trypillia Megasites in Context: Independent Urban Development in Chalcolithic Eastern Europe

Gaydarska, Bisserka; Nebbia, Marco; Chapman, John

doi:10.1017/s0959774319000301

Trypillia Megasites in Context: Independent Urban Development in Chalcolithic Eastern Europe

Gaydarska, Bisserka; Nebbia, Marco; Chapman, John

Authors

Bisserka Gaydarska

Marco Nebbia

John Chapman

Abstract

The Trypillia megasites of the Ukrainian forest steppe formed the largest fourth-millennium bc sites in Eurasia and possibly the world. Discovered in the 1960s, the megasites have so far resisted all attempts at an understanding of their social structure and dynamics. Multi-disciplinary investigations of the Nebelivka megasite by an Anglo-Ukrainian research project brought a focus on three research questions: (1) what was the essence of megasite lifeways? (2) can we call the megasites early cities? and (3) what were their origins? The first question is approached through a summary of Project findings on Nebelivka and the subsequent modelling of three different scenarios for what transpired to be a different kind of site from our expectations. The second question uses a relational approach to urbanism to show that megasites were so different from other coeval settlements that they could justifiably be termed ‘cities'. The third question turns to the origins of sites that were indeed larger and earlier than the supposed first cities of Mesopotamia and whose development indicates that there were at least two pathways to early urbanism in Eurasia.

Citation

Gaydarska, B., Nebbia, M., & Chapman, J. (2020). Trypillia Megasites in Context: Independent Urban Development in Chalcolithic Eastern Europe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 30(1), 97-121. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774319000301

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	Oct 14, 2019
Publication Date	Feb 28, 2020
Deposit Date	Oct 17, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Oct 17, 2019
Journal	Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Print ISSN	0959-7743
Electronic ISSN	1474-0540
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	30
Issue	1
Pages	97-121
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774319000301

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Advance online version COPYRIGHT: © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2019. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.