Archaeologica.org

Furthermore, after it was abandoned, no one else came along to build on top of it.
How many other ancient cities are like this? (Some of our correspondents know the answer to this, I bet.)

Minimalist wrote:

Furthermore, after it was abandoned, no one else came along to build on top of it.
How many other ancient cities are like this? (Some of our correspondents know the answer to this, I bet.)

I don't know that there is a formula for that, Stan. In the Middle East, where this phenomenon is almost universal (almost) it is because people built and re-built in specific places for obvious reasons such as the availability of water and/or arable land. In the case of a place like Megiddo, it was on a rise dominating the road to Egypt and while not terribly well sited for defense (given the number of times it was sacked and burned!) the overall importance of controlling the trade route must have made up for an occasional sacking and burning.

Similarly, Troy dominated the Hellespont, another obvious trade route which was repeatedly conquered.

One which was not rebuilt was the Omride site of Samaria in Isael.

Minimalist wrote:Now that you mention it, R/S, I don't know how common the practice of rebuilding on a destroyed/abandoned site may have in the Americas. It seems as if it was not done at all or not very much. The Maya had a tendency to abandon a city an not look back.

Bad karma about the site, maybe?

The interesting thing about Caral and the rest of the Supe Valley sites, is that it illustrates the problems archaeologists have dealing with so-called "urban settlements" and "state societies." Building monumental architecture such as pyramids and irrigation canals and cities takes planning, pretty sophisticated planning, in fact. When archaeologists first stumbled across the cities of our ancient pasts, we began developing our theories of why states rise. One of the most prevalent theories was that it takes a combination of factors to create the political climate that creates public works; and that usually means full scale agriculture, craft specialization, a writing system, ceramic production, social stratification, even metallurgy.
But the Supe Valley sites, and other early urban settlements such as Catalhoyuk in Turkey [6300-5500 BC], apparently arose without all of these elements. Although we can't know the political structure of the people who built Caral, we know that they did not have ceramics or metallurgy or writing. The investigations of Caral and the other Supe Valley sites promise to teach us how people choose to become urban dwellers.

I've understood the Maya's abandoned their city sites because the immediately surrounding region's agricultural production capacity had been exhausted

Minimalist wrote:

I've understood the Maya's abandoned their city sites because the immediately surrounding region's agricultural production capacity had been exhausted

Yeah, that's a theory but, as demonstrated by the fact that many of their cities are overgrown by the jungle, nature recovers if man leaves it alone for a while. But the Maya never went back.

Minimalist wrote:

I've understood the Maya's abandoned their city sites because the immediately surrounding region's agricultural production capacity had been exhausted

Yeah, that's a theory but, as demonstrated by the fact that many of their cities are overgrown by the jungle, nature recovers if man leaves it alone for a while. But the Maya never went back.

Now that you mention it, R/S, I don't know how common the practice of rebuilding on a destroyed/abandoned site may have in the Americas. It seems as if it was not done at all or not very much

There is *some* Initial period occupation at Caral but by this time Dr Shady believes that the center of power in the Supe valley had transferred to Era de Pando (a site about half way between Caral and the ocean).

http://www.caralperu.gob.pe/principal_ing.htm

That's a link to the English language version of the Caral website