This volume investigates how the structure and use of space developed and changed in cities, and examines the role of different societal groups in shaping urbanism. Culturally and chronologically diverse case studies provide a basis to examine recent theoretical and methodological shifts in the archaeology of ancient cities. The book's primary goal is to examine how ancient cities were made by the people who lived in them. The authors argue that there is a mutually constituting relationship between urban form and the actions and interactions of a plurality of individuals, groups, and institutions, each with their own motivations and identities. Space is therefore socially produced as these agents operate in multiple spheres.

This volume investigates how the structure and use of space developed and changed in cities, and examines the role of different societal groups in shaping urbanism. Culturally and chronologically diverse case studies provide a basis to examine recent theoretical and methodological shifts in the archaeology of ancient cities. The book's primary goal is to examine how ancient cities were made by the people who lived in them. The authors argue that there is a mutually constituting relationship between urban form and the actions and interactions of a plurality of individuals, groups, and institutions, each with their own motivations and identities. Space is therefore socially produced as these agents operate in multiple spheres.

This book adopts an integrative approach to investigate the role of monumental architecture in shaping social dynamics and power relations on the island of Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age (LBA; c.1700-1050 BCE). Using such an approach, archaeologists studying ancient societies elsewhere can analyze the relationship between the built environment and human behaviour. Monumental buildings on Late Bronze Age Cyprus provided contexts for social interactions, such as ceremonial feasting and cultic rituals, that created social bonds and forged wider community identities, while also materializing social boundaries and inequalities. More than just spaces, these contexts were socially-constructed places, imbued with identity and memory, that played an integral role in social organization during this transformative period. This integrative approach emphasizes the role of buildings in configuring movement and encounter and in serving as the contexts for interactions through which sociopolitical relations are developed, maintained, transformed and reproduced. It investigates this using an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates access analysis with the study of the materiality of built environments and how they encode and communicate meanings and shape the experiences of those who interact with them.