Distinguished Lecturer Series: “Were Ancient Cities Resilient To Shocks? How Would We Know?”

Because they offer deep temporal perspectives, the historical and archaeological records of past cities have potential to make a unique contribution to understanding of urban resilience and urban adaptations to climate change today. I single out two approaches that illustrate the potentials and pitfalls of this kind of past-to-present transfer of knowledge: shocks and persistence. The responses of urban residents and institutions to diverse types of shock is a kind of specified resilience (i.e., resilience to what, who, when, and where), whereas the temporal fates of cities over time—persistence—provides insights on the general resilience of early cities. I explore reasons for the great difficulty in applying past knowledge to contemporary urban settings, particularly the near-complete disjunction between research on past resilience and research on past urbanism.