This volume developed out of a 2017 symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, as part of its urban landscape studies program. Landscapes of Preindustrial Urbanism provides a broadly cross-cultural and wide-ranging historical perspective on urban landscapes. Its 10 chapters—from archaeologists, art historians, and conservators—are organized into three thematic sections. Landscape historian Georges Farhat's introduction argues the merits of abandoning rigid definitions of the preindustrial city, of tracking the historical co-constitution of cities and landscape, and of recognizing the very materials of urbanism as agents of historical change.

Jason Ur begins Part 1 (Earthworks) by challenging classic models of urbanism in Mesopotamia. He discusses mega-sites (Khirbat al-Fakhar), a low-density urban center (Tell Brak), and several “classic” Early Bronze Age cities. Ur's data tracks the distinct growth trajectories of urban landscapes. He sees some evidence for “elite interventions” as they reacted to “emergent forces” (p. 56) but more evidence for “bottom up” self-organization. In contrast, Hendrik Dey's chapter stresses top-down organization in his fascinating discussion of two roads after imperial collapse in Rome. In explaining why authorities shifted their “processional pride” from Via Triumphalis to the Via Papalis, Dey shows the afterlife of imperial urban space in a rapidly depopulated city. The accumulated sediments, clogged sewers, and crumbling and collapsing monuments play a key role here, directing human choices before a massive “anthropogenic reshaping” in the twelfth century. Timothy Pauketat explores the nonhuman at dense but “distanciated” Cahokia—the Mississippian mound center in Illinois—and the associated urban landscape of houses, bundles, shrine complexes, and steam baths. He highlights climate dynamics and atmospheric affects, each experienced as “fundamental, inchoate, affective forces” (p. 92). Pauketat defines Cahokia as an “ontological tangle of history and humanity” (p. 106). But surely all urban landscapes can be described as such. His broader question, however, is provocative. “How important,” he asks (p. 102), are “the affective properties of some places or regions in the history of urbanism”?

Part II (Waterscapes) begins with Jordan Pickett's overview of the Roman “hydraulic paradigm.” Preference for spring water in the Roman world led to technological innovations (including aqueducts, water-powered mills, and suburban gardens), emergent inequalities, and ecological impacts (including deforestation for heating urban baths). Pickett shows that the history of infrastructure such as aqueducts does not necessarily parallel political histories, with different rates of abandonment across the empire. Monica Smith's chapter on urban landscapes of the Indian subcontinent also explores water management. Smith summarizes the relationship of ancient urbanisms to the countryside, to religious development, and to monsoon seasonality. Her three case studies (Kaushambi, Sisupalgarh, and Anuradhapura) show the flexibility of certain urban landscapes and the critical role of “anticipatory agricultural infrastructure” (p. 106). Jean-Baptiste Chevance explores the ninth-century AD capital of the Khmer kingdom (Mahendraparvata) in Cambodia via lidar, survey, and excavation. Work at Angkor has prioritized elite histories and religion. Chevance instead focuses on an urban network associated with a grid system organizing platforms, ponds, dikes, canals, and various embarkments. This urban landscape had a unique growth pattern and brief occupation before being abandoned. Architect and conservator Priyaleen Singh discusses a changing cultural ecology in Bhubaneswar, India. The old city of Ekamrakshetra became a center of pilgrimage in the eighth century, when a number of temples and associated water tanks were constructed for bathing and purification. Singh suggests that a kind of “eco-philosophical shift from eco-theology to a technocratic view of nature” (p. 219) occurred after independence in 1947, with sacred groves of trees being replaced by a “single vocabulary of lawns” (p. 213). This is a fascinating study, but the “alternative socialist ecology perspective” (p. 219) might have been explained.

The last two chapters form Part III (Forestry) of the volume. Michael Heckenberger asks, “What was urbanism in its smallest, most diffuse forms, including landscapes without singular cities?” (p. 230). Xingu was a densely occupied, well-integrated Amazonian region from AD 1250 through 1650, with elements of hierarchy and heterarchy across networks of walled towns and satellite villages. Drawing from considerable ethnoarchaeological and archeological fieldwork in the Upper Xingu region, Heckenburger explores ecological practices, including a “patchy mosaic pattern” of land use and the development of “working forests.” He also looks to urban futures, suggesting that Amazonian “ontological bombs” might lead to rethinking cities (p. 256). This idea, however, is not developed or connected to Pauketat's efforts at Cahokia. Cameron Monroe's chapter explores West African urbanism during the Atlantic era. He demonstrates the historical contingency of urban emergence and the methodological difficulties of tracking such processes in forested areas characterized by slash-and-burn agriculture, perishable materials, and a palimpsest distribution of artifacts. Monroe's study of the Kingdom of Dahomey (Benin), which relied on hot-spot GIS analysis, suggest urbanism was a state-driven process associated with the slave trade rather than a long, slow local process.

The best chapters in this volume explore what urban landscapes “do” (rather than what they look like), and they consider what Farhat calls the “descendants of urban landscapes” (p. 13). The most compelling contributions focus on one or two themes, but several suffer from attempting to cover too much ground. Further dialogue between chapters would have been beneficial, especially vis-à-vis elites, nonhuman mediators, and networked urbanism. Although it is perhaps a knee-jerk disciplinary reaction, I find the use of (extensive) endnotes rather frustrating. These small complaints aside, this is a richly illustrated and provocative collection, contributing to the important interdisciplinary focus on cities and cultural ecologies at Dumbarton Oaks. The book will be of great interest not only to those long interested in ancient urban landscapes but also to those less familiar with the state of post-Childean approaches to urbanism.