The idea for this special issue arose out of a session on ‘Pre-Roman Urbanism in Eurasia’ at the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Istanbul in 2014. This was preceded by an international symposium in Vienna in 2012 on proto-urbanization in Western Anatolia and neighbouring areas in the fourth millennium BC, and succeeded by two more conferences on early urbanism with special focus on Eurasia at the universities of Buffalo (April 2016) and Durham (May 2016). This healthy interest reflects an emerging research agenda inspired by exciting new (and not so new) discoveries, some of which form the focus of the following papers. It also brought a skeleton out of the closet, that of the troubled relationship between European prehistory and the emergence of urbanism, a problem with two aspects. The first is the tacit assumption that the first impulses of urban development might be expected to follow the same Asiatic trajectory as the preceding Neolithization of Europe. Thus, the Minoan ‘first-generation secondary states’ (Parkinson and Galaty 2007, p. 118) should be considered the earliest European examples. Despite the well-argued case that the Balkans were an independent centre of innovations (Renfrew 1969)—in the case of copper metallurgy, even preceding Anatolia (Kienlin 2010)—diffusionist models affect research agendas to this day. The second aspect of the problem stems from another deep-rooted prejudice, whereby an essentialized view of the Classical, primarily Mediterranean, town or oppidum denied a fair ‘urban’ hearing to any Iron Age set of evidence that apparently deviated from this norm (Moore et al. 2013; Fernandez-Gotz et al. 2014). One of the aims of this special issue is to question the validity of these long-held views on the basis of new evidence. Simply ignoring this evidence or branding these cases exceptions is no longer sustainable: the new straws have already broken the old camel’s back. The second aim of this special issue is to address the common misconception that, if a given settlement form was not sustained for long enough (and how long that is has not been clearly defined), then it probably did not contribute to the overall urbanism phenomenon. The flaw in this view has been demonstrated by the now well-documented ‘boom and bust’ pattern that existed alongside a more stable pattern during the EBA urbanization in the Fertile Crescent (Wilkinson et al. 2014). Other patterns of urbanization may involve cycles of centralization and decentralization (Fernandez-Gotz et al. 2014). Permanently occupied, long-term settlements were but one part of the urban narrative, albeit an important part. Looking at the wider context should reveal different trajectories of living together, even if some of these ended up in evolutionary culs-de-sac.

中文翻译：

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简介：欧洲史前与城市研究

这个特刊的想法来自2014年在伊斯坦布尔举行的欧洲考古学家协会（EAA）会议上有关“欧亚大陆的前罗马城市主义”的会议。在此之前，2012年在维也纳举行了关于原型的国际研讨会。 -公元前四千年在西安纳托利亚及其周边地区进行了城市化，随后又在布法罗（2016年4月）和达勒姆（2016年5月）的大学又举行了两次关于早期城市化的会议，重点是欧亚大陆。这种健康的兴趣反映了受到令人兴奋的新发现（而不是新发现）启发的新兴研究议程，其中一些形成了以下论文的重点。这也给人们带来了一个印象，那就是欧洲史前时期与都市主义的出现之间的麻烦关系，这是两个方面的问题。第一个是默认的假设，即城市发展的第一波冲动可能会遵循与之前的欧洲新石器时代相同的亚洲轨迹。因此，应将米诺斯州的“第一代次要国家”（Parkinson和Galaty，2007年，第118页）视为欧洲最早的例子。尽管有争议的例子是巴尔干是一个独立的创新中心（Renfrew 1969）（就铜冶金而言，甚至早于安纳托利亚（Kienlin，2010）），但扩散模型至今仍影响着研究议程。问题的第二个方面来自另一个根深蒂固的偏见，即对古典主义（主要是地中海，城镇或鸦片）的本质化看法，使铁器时代的任何明显偏离该规范的证据都无法得到公平的“城市”听证（摩尔et al.2013；Fernandez-Gotz等。2014）。本期特刊的目的之一是在新证据的基础上质疑这些长期存在的观点的有效性。仅仅无视这些证据或将这些案例标记为例外不再是可持续的：新的稻草已经打断了老骆驼的后背。这个特殊问题的第二个目的是要解决一个普遍的误解，即如果给定的住所形式不能持续足够长的时间（以及尚未明确定义的时间长短），那么它很可能并没有助长整个城市化现象。 。这种观点的缺陷已被现在有据可查的“繁荣与萧条”模式证明，这种模式与肥沃新月的EBA城市化过程中更稳定的模式同时存在（Wilkinson等人，2014）。其他城市化模式可能涉及集中化和分散化的循环（Fernandez-Gotz等人，2014）。永久居住的长期定居点只是城市叙事的一部分，尽管很重要。纵观更广阔的背景，应该揭示生活在一起的不同轨迹，即使其中一些轨迹最终演变成死胡同。