The Outline and Design of Fortified Cities of the Early Bronze IB and II

To date scholarship has maintained that urban centers emerged in the southern Levant during the Early Bronze IB in a process in which fortified cities were the skeletal formation of settlements of the region and were perceived as part of the archaeological landscape. A survey of the early urban topographical centers in the southern Levant shows that these early centers were built on summits, ridges or slopes, or a combination of these. In this paper we will argue for a different perspective: while topographical elements could to some extent determine the location of the urban centers of the Early Bronze Age, human activity could have changed the landscape. Our argument is not based on objective conditions, but rather on the social organization within these centers. The emergence of Early Bronze Age cities introduces the question of how much the configuration of the fortified cities was influenced by a known architectural design model or whether it reflects an existing topography whereby walls were erected on it. Similarly, we can study how much the construction of such fortified cities was inspired by common sources or whether these cities underwent particular processes for each community with little reciprocal influence.