ABSTRACT
The development of early civilisations in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East is particularly noteworthy for the variety of paths whereby agrarian societies became increasingly differentiated, often involving the periodic amalgamation and abandonment of urban communities. Following a deeply rooted intellectual tradition (e.g. Childe 1950; Smith 2009), scholars have long envisioned cities as the nuclei that integrated central places with each other and with the myriad villages that housed the majority of ancient populations. A comparison of Bronze Age communities in the Jordan Rift and on the island of Cyprus provides a perspective on emerging complex societies from an alternative vantage point focused on the interactions between farming communities, their managed environments and pyrotechnologies in distinctly non-urban social settings.
