Because "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber and Wendgrow was a library book I had to turn in, this drawing was finished from memory. I started it when I turned to page 292 and read their description of this 2,000 population village approximately 6,000 years old. I was struck by its originality in creating an urban form. This is an idealized illustration.
Wendgrow and Graeber essentially concluded their investigation of the origins of inequality by stating that a combination of factors have contributed. The rise of organized religion; the rise of the state; schizmogenesis...to pin inequality to a single cause is a fool's game.
During their comprehensive survey of world culture and the current knowledge basis of archeology, Graeber and Wendgrow were able to overturn several key myths, including the romantic myth of the "small bands of hunter-gatherer". Their survey showed how in fact many different forms of social organization existed, both in the past and in the present.
The authors also dispensed with the myth of inevitability, or a deterministic evolution from "small bands of hunter-gatherers" to agriculture to urbanization. Over and over they showed how paleolitic, neolithic, and iron age societies experimented with, and rejected agriculture. They showed how urbanization often was non-hierarchical, with many cities having no palaces, no grand monuments, no institutional detritius. And yet there were other cities with extremely grand monuments and institutions, cities created by people who rejected the notion of authoritarianism.
The above plan was shown in the book as an example of a 2,000 population town discovered in the Ukraine in a region where the extremely rich earth, called chernozem, stimulated an early form of agriculture.
The town has a single circular road shaped in a ring, and appeared to be divided into twelve or thirteen districts, each containing dwellings for about 100 - 200 people. The center of the ring is a giant 3-acre void possibly used as a grazing commons but likely had other uses as well. Each of the 12 "neighborhoods" has the foundations of a multipurpose assembly hall placed somewhere in its segment of the ring road. The rest of the building string along the ring road or are built along lateral side roads, mostly into the common area.
The diagram is incomplete, in that no context shows how the town was defended. Was it on a plateau, or were there natural cliffs or walls that helped control access? Or was security a concern?
The diagram shows a single road bisecting the ring, as if it straddled a highway.
The divisions between the "neighborhoods" had channels - probably sanitary drainage channels, as some also had pits (trash pits?). Much information is missing to determine how the town functioned.
In analyzing the town, Graeber and Wendgrow compare it to Saint-Engrace, an ancient Basque town in the Pyranees which had a similar form. In that town, the neighborhood to the right (clockwise) is considered the "First Neighbor". Each neighborhood would, as a part of a festival, bake two loaves of bread, one for themselves and one for their First Neighbor. The next festival would be that neighborhood's turn to host. In that way the festival would rotate around the ring.
The ring also encloses a commons. The citizens have an interesting growth regulator by balancing their additional growth into the commons with the need for this commons to be available for grazing of animals. In Nebelivka (actual), several neighborhoods at the north limb of the ring appear to have grown substantially into the commons. Was this a tragedy of the commons?
The "assembly house" probably served multifunctional purposes: religious, education, political, festival events, etc.
What is lacking? Well, the ratio of dwelling area to "assembly" area is probably 100 to 1. In our current western society, the ratio of private to governmental is about 20%.
Residences were typically about 5m x 10m but varied in size, but not greatly. Graeber and Wendgrow use this as an example of a town lacking in palaces or "great houses". The ring pattern also flattens social classes - each house feeds off the ring.
The ring road probably served commercial purposes with businesses fronting the homes.
So, could this pattern serve as a possible model for a new development? Some constraints would be:
Agricultural in nature - otherwise, the commons is just a big waste of space.
Limited use of the car.
We as moderns would need a sophisticated infrastructure to support this.
We as moderns would have to be willing to give up the specialized institutional controls and the physical spaces needed for these.
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