Cities Against the State / David Wengrow

David Wengrow will question the definition of 'urbanisation' for the final event of The Ambivalence of Design AA-Yonsei Lecture Series.
Building on his work with David Graeber (The Dawn of Everything), David Wengrow will briefly introduce a new collaboration with Forensic Architecture (Eyal Weizman). They suggest an alignment between these two projects, which both seek to query the authority of state narratives by extracting counter-archives of information: respectively from the archaeological record, and from crime scenes. To explore this alignment, Wengrow will discuss the case of 6000-year-old settlements identified by archaeologists on the Bug-Dnieper interfluve, in modern Ukraine, which have been used to question the definition of “urbanisation” and the position of the modern state as a telos of human social development.
DAVID WENGROW is Professor of Comparative Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and has been a visiting professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and at the universities of Auckland and Freiburg. He is the author of four books, including What Makes Civilization?, The Origins of Monsters, and international best-seller The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (co-authored with David Graeber).
The AA-Yonsei Lecture Series The Ambivalence of Design is organised by James Kwang-Ho Chung & Brendon Carlin (Unit Masters, AA Diploma 19), Jooeun Sung (Professor, Yonsei University) and Jae-Won Yi (Adjunct Professor, Yonsei University).
This event is funded by the British Council grant (British Council UK-Korea Virtual Academic Collaboration grant).

[@okaytoletgo]

Stunning. Thank you. Still, how damaged these sites are now, what with the horror in Ukraine now.

[@PaulThronson]

How exciting! A follow up to Dawn of Everything that looks to continue the popular and successful trend to challenge tired academic assumptions.

[@roc7880]

Such sites can be found also in Romania, Serbia, and the Balkans. But to assume that the lack of temples and administration buildings proves the lack of a centralized state is shallow and simplistic, power relationships can exist in many forms. check the Native American network of settlements that also lacked such structures, this is Sumero-centrism.

[@kensurrency2564]

All I can say is “Holy Shit!!” They’re really doing it-upending the old, tired narratives of our history! Thank god for LIDAR!!!

[@Stegeln]

Does anyone know where I can read more about Japanese "chain burning", mentioned in the very last question?

[@julianshepherd2038]

You need a lot of evidence but if you pull it off you get a top job and a medal from the king or Nobel or both