Three Ways a City: Urban Lessons from Archaeological Research at Caracol, Belize

The Department of Archaeology presents a talk by Adrian S. Z. Chase., Visiting Assistant Professor. Chase is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in urbanism, computational archaeology, and prehispanic Mesoamerica.

What is a city? Beyond archaeology, multiple disciplines have attempted to understand urban processes and the development of cities for centuries. These efforts have led to a cornucopia of definitions, methods, and theoretical paradigms that often talk past each other. Some cities sprawl over the landscape while others exist as small but concentrated centers; however, these and other settlements all exhibit three essential aspects of urbanism. Each aspect relates to a way of studying, interpreting, and understanding settlements and the urban processes that occur across their various anthropogenic landscapes. All three key concepts can be shown with concrete examples from Caracol, Belize and the combination of perspectives provides for a far more detailed perspective on garden city urbanism with implications for understandings of other ancient, historical, and modern cities.