Building the Black City

The story of how cities come into being usually goes something like this: Mobile groups settle down and start to farm. Agricultural surpluses, in turn, make it possible for some people to spend their days engaging in activities other than farming, leading to, for example, castes of priests and armies of soldiers with their associated bureaucracies. Eventually, people completely abandon their nomadic past, and some settlements become cities. Some of these cities become capitals of states or even

Andrew Curry is a contributing editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.