Review of / Recensión de: Dean Saitta. First Cities: Planning Lessons for the 21st Century. Elements in Anthropological Archaeology in the 21st Century. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 2024, 94 pp. ISBN: 978-1-009-33874-5. Online ISBN: 9781009338769. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009338769.

The Cambridge Elements series launched in 2019 with the aim of providing readable, up-to-date, short-form introductions to academic topics, with scope for authors to highlight not only recent disciplinary developments but also their individual perspectives on them.In this book, First Cities: Planning Lessons for the 21 st Century, Dean Saitta has exemplified the strengths of this format, and avoided most of its pitfalls.The book has two stated objectives: "The first is to synthesize archaeological knowledge of ancient cities in a way that strengthens a comparative understanding of urbanism across time and space and, by extension, the field of urban studies.The second is to show how this body of knowledge is relevant to several challenges that concern urban scholars, planners, and policymakers today" (p.2).In pursuit of these twin goals, Saitta's book is divided into two short sections outlining the theoretical context and orientation of the work, two lengthier sections discussing case studies of early urbanism across the globe, and two closing sections summarising the key lessons for contemporary urban studies.In Section 1, Saitta steps lightly across the quagmire surrounding the use of the terms 'city', 'ancient' and 'urbanism', offering brief, flexible, and ultimately pragmatic working definitions that emphasize the essential processes (rather than features) of urban life: population agglomeration; intense social interaction; diversity in demography, social roles, and specialisation; and placemaking through the structuring of the built environment and its impacts on human experience (pp.2-3).To this reviewer, this approach is wholly sensible, shifting the focus from what cities are to what they do (or more specifically what people do to constitute them).Section 2 introduces the theoretical background to the study.Urbanism has been a central topic in recent debates around archaeology's contemporary relevance, which, for simplicity, Saitta (drawing on Smith, 2023) groups into two main perspectives.The first ("Scientific Realism") argues that the general laws and principles derivable from the study of ancient cities can inform urban planning and problem-solving today (see e. g.Ortman et al., 2015).The other ("Interpretivism") advocates for a more pluralistic understanding of human placemaking, where the variability apparent in the past can broaden our horizons for policymaking and action today, including by integrating Indigenous perspectives (pp.6-12; see e. g.Graeber and Wengrow, 2021; Millhauser and Earl, 2022).Seeking a middle ground, Saitta argues for an "engaged pluralism", which involves "(1) putting general and particular studies in conversation with each other and (2) using both of them to address societal needs" (p.12).While this might be viewed as fence-sitting, the subsequent Sections 3 and 4 amply demonstrate Saitta's commitment to this pluralistic approach.Here, in a diverse selection of case studies of early urbanism drawn from Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, he balances comparative, quantitative and generalising metrics with qualitative, nuanced and culturally specific observations.In his discussion of sites including Çatalhöyük, Tell Brak, Nebelivka, Mohen jo-Daro, Jenné-Jeno, Tres Zapotes, Monte Albán, Teotihuacan, Caracol, Chaco Canyon and Cahokia, Saitta calls particular attention to evidence of collective governance, the reproduction of domestic structures at larger scales, zoning and connective infrastructure, ethnic and demographic diversity, and sustainable resource management.While each case study is treated necessarily briefly, Saitta offers the key observations in a clear and characterful manner, supported throughout by relevant and up-to-date sources.Particularly enjoyable are the thought-provoking and sometimes unexpected parallels Saitta draws between his case studies, and with present day contexts (not least, the site of Nebelivka and Nevada's Burning Man festival).The closing Sections 5 and 6 offer reflections on how these and similar case studies might inform current and future city-planning.Drawing on the work of urban theorist Richard Sennet (2018), Saitta argues the deep past offers ample evidence of cities offering 1) synchronous public spaces accommodating multiple activities; 2) porous boundaries; 3) place-marking structures and monuments; 4) architectural "shells" capable of being restructured and adapted to changes uses; and 5) "seed planning", the varied use of the prior four features in local, community-led contexts, as an alternative to master planning.While some may be skeptical that such features of ancient cities can

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