The Limits of Settlement Growth
A Theoretical Outline

A study of the effects of the built environment on long-term settlement development.

Roland Fletcher (Author)

9780521038102, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 July 2007

304 pages, 6 b/w illus. 3 tables
24.3 x 16.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.491 kg

'… this book is important; it is Big Picture archaeology at its best and a provocative and stimulating proposal worthy of consideration.' American Anthropologist

In this study Roland Fletcher argues that the built environment becomes a constraint on the long-term development of a settlement. It is costly to move settlements, or to demolish and rebuild from scratch, so the initial layout and buildings, and the forms of communication that result, may come to shackle further development and also to place constraints on social and political change. Using this theoretical framework, Dr Fletcher reviews worldwide settlement growth over the past 15,000 years, and concludes with a major discussion of the great transformations of human settlements - from mobile to sedentary, sedentary to urban, and urban to industrial. This book is an ambitious contribution to archaeological theory, and the questions it raises also have implications for the future of urban settlement.

List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Summary
Part I. Theoretical Context: The Role of the Material as Behaviour: 1. Archaeology, settlement growth and the material component of human behaviour
2. The material as behaviour
3. A hierarchy of social explanation: locating the material
Part II. The Limits of Settlement Growth: Behavioural Stress and the Material Management of Community Life: 4. The behavioural parameters of interaction and communication
5. Settlement growth trajectories
6. Settlement growth transitions and the role of the material
Part III. Implications: Transformations and Constraints of Community Life: 7. The development of sedentism
8. The development of agrarian and industrial urbanism
9. Future urban growth
Technical notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Archaeology [HD]