ABSTRACT
The social, economic and political implications of urban development are among the most widely discussed aspects of early polis formation on the Greek mainland. They are also among the most controversial, since the manner of relating social and power relations to physical behaviour and thence the material record remains a much debated issue. The importance of the main town is highlighted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre’s observation that the two predominant usages of the term polis, for a political community and the main town associated with it, correlate so strongly that they were probably indistinguishable.1 The origins of city life, consistently highlighted by ancient sources as central to the polis as a political community,2 have been sought in the emergence or expansion of nucleated settlements (often collected around an acropolis), in the creation of public space, and in certain (mostly colonial) cases, in systematic town planning with perceived implications for an underlying decision-making process.3
