ABSTRACT
As there are problems in defining urban, so there are related difficulties in establishing the origins of urban settlements. Much of the available evidence for early forms of settlement is archaeological and goes back several millennia in time, but, at site investigations, the scale and sophistication of the built environment, with its accumulation of artefacts, leaves little doubt of the existence of an urban centre. Archaeological evidence, however, is often characterized by its unevenness and in some parts of the world there is little or no evidence of early cities. Lack of evidence may indicate either that cities did not exist or that insufficient proof has survived in recognizable form. Archaeological investigation is expensive and time-consuming and many of the major investigations were completed before the advent of major technological advances such as remote sensing and dating techniques. Without such studies, few statements are possible on those parts of the world thought to have experienced early urbanization. McGee (1967), for example, could suggest only that the origins of south-east Asian cities are obscure and may be related to the diffusion of Chinese and Indian forms of political organizations in the first century AD. Where detailed evidence is available, as for Catal Huyuk in Anatolia (Jacobs 1969), it is typically for one site and cannot easily be generalized to encompass regional systems of settlements. Many writers have examined the question of urban origins and, perhaps inevitably, the answers vary.
