This project studies public space, that is, streets and squares of the preclassical Near Eastern cities as a material correlate of urban habits and civic communities.
Civic community is understood here as any set of individuals with comparable status bound together by a consciousness of belonging to specific urban cultures. In ancient Mesopotamia, civic communities existed as independent political subjects. Although political power was mostly controlled by religious or monarchical institutions, citizens could express their political opinions in assemblies or in informal gatherings. Both in its institutional and informal dimension, the civic community acted as a significant political factor throughout the history of the ancient Near East, and was a latent antagonistic undercurrent to the monarchical and religious central powers.
Recently, the question of “collective governance” has gained scientific momentous and a number of influential studies reviewed the textual sources in search of the ancient Near Eastern roots of Western collective institutions. However, while philological studies surge, the archaeological dimension of the ancient Near Eastern city intended as a collective body of citizens has received less attention. While the Temple and the Palace as architectonic materializations of the central powers engaged entire generations of archaeologists, the material traces left by civic communities have only seldom been object of analysis. In fact, it has been mostly assumed that citizenship did not leave any archaeological trace. This research challenges this paradigm.
The issue of the material footprint left by civic culture is important for today's society because it connects directly to the ways in which, right now and in the near future, civic communities in transitional, authoritarian policies contest, appropriate and transform public space for antagonistic purposes. It also investigates the response of organized political power in terms of coordinated strategies to regiment political behavior by promoting a public space design that either promotes or, more often, discourages democratic developments.
This research focused on the case study of the city of Ugarit in the 13th century BCE. In this period, Ugarit was a rich dynastic kingdom embedded in a complex and fragmented political scene, including local civic institution counterbalancing the power of the monarchy. Textual sources reveal an atmosphere of relative openness to private business as well as the existence of a lively political debate and a tense network of pressure groups, reaching into and beyond the royal administration. The peculiar socio-political situation at Ugarit reflects on the form and topology of public space. This fact is particularly evident when looking at urban squares. This research identified a large market square and a number of smaller ceremonial squares. The market square was located in the city center, physically disconnected from the royal palace and open to visitors from outside the city walls. It was a place for business activities and informal gatherings outside the direct control of the monarchical administration. Conversely, ceremonial squares were located far away from the city gates, next to the royal palace or the city’s main temples. The squares adjacent to the palace were surrounded by buildings where feasting on a grand scale took place, to be seen as consensus-building gatherings under the aegida of the monarchy. Conversely, the temples’ squares, decorated with monumental religious stelas, functioned as culmination points of popular civic festivals under control of the clergy.
In conclusion, the case of Ugarit proves that, provided an ad-hoc methodology, communal political life can be indirectly detected in the ancient built environment, in particular in public space such as streets and squares.
