THE SECOND URBANISATION

Research record

The expression “second urbanisation” is commonly used for the growth of towns, cities, states, specialised production and long-distance exchange in northern India during the early first millennium BCE, especially in the Ganga plains. It is useful only if it is not turned into a fixed date or a single-cause event. Archaeological sequences differ from site to site; some settlements grew gradually from earlier agrarian occupations, some acquired fortifications or durable architecture at different times, and some remained rural while participating in increasingly complex exchange networks. This chapter therefore uses “second urbanisation” as a regional process whose components became visible at different rates rather than as a moment when villages suddenly became cities (Allchin 1995; Sawant and Shete 2016). The term contrasts early historic urban growth with the much earlier cities of the Indus or Harappan civilisation. It does not imply direct institutional continuity between those urban traditions and the Middle Ganga cities. The long chronological and geographical gap requires independent explanation. The “second” urbanisation is thus a historiographical label for a renewed and differently organised urban process in the first millennium BCE. Its archaeological signature includes settlement concentration, fortifications, specialised crafts, exchange, coins, increasingly durable construction and the emergence of political and religious institutions, but the exact bundle varies among sites. Chapters 2–5 demonstrated long sequences of hunting, farming, animal keeping, fishing, craft production and riverine mobility before the early historic period. Chirand, Chechar, Panda, Oriup and other sites already show communities capable of managing surplus, mixed subsistence and exchange. Urban growth must therefore be understood as a reorganisation and intensification of existing social landscapes, not as civilisation arriving in an unoccupied forest. This point also corrects older models in which dense forest was imagined as the single barrier that iron axes suddenly removed.

Section index

1. 6.1 Scope: “second urbanisation” is a shorthand, not a single event
2. 6.2 What makes the process “second”
3. 6.3 The Middle Ganga plain was not empty before cities
4. 6.4 Iron mattered, but it was not an urban switch
5. 6.5 Agriculture supplied the indispensable rural base
6. 6.6 Surplus was social, not simply biological
7. 6.7 Northern Black Polished Ware: an important marker, not the definition of urbanism
8. 6.8 NBPW chronology is not a universal fixed bracket
9. 6.9 What archaeologists should require before calling a settlement urban
10. 6.10 Vaishali: archaeology and historical identification must be kept distinct
11. 6.11 Vaishali’s importance was regional, not only political
12. 6.12 Raja Vishal ka Garh and the danger of function-by-name
13. 6.13 Chirand: a rural–riverine settlement inside the urbanising economy
14. 6.14 Rural sites were active participants, not passive suppliers
15. 6.15 Fortification was labour made visible
16. 6.16 Champa: Anga’s archaeological sequence is indispensable
17. 6.17 Champa’s rampart did not appear from nothing
18. 6.18 Ring-wells, drains and water management: ordinary infrastructure matters
19. 6.19 Craft specialisation increased the number of non-farming livelihoods
20. 6.20 Iron technology widened possibilities for craft and construction
21. 6.21 Exchange expanded through multiple media
22. 6.22 NBPW itself records circulation and selective consumption
23. 6.23 Roads and rivers created a network, not a chain of isolated capitals
24. 6.24 Religious institutions were also urban-economic actors
25. 6.25 Political institutions concentrated resources
26. 6.26 Literacy belongs to the later visible phase, not to the beginning by assumption
27. 6.27 Social inequality became more materially visible
28. 6.28 Women’s labour is structurally necessary but archaeologically undernamed
29. 6.29 Nepal-side Mithila: do not export the Bihar sequence without evidence
30. 6.30 Conclusion: cities were produced by relationships

Cite this record

Gajendra Thakur. “THE SECOND URBANISATION.” Videha Digital Research Archive: Mithila–Vajji–Anga. Videha — https://www.videha.co.in/ · ISSN 2229-547X · GitHub mirror: https://videha-ejournal.github.io/videha/ · Digital Research Archives on GitHub: https://github.com/videha-ejournal. https://videha-ejournal.github.io/mithila-vajji-anga/records/history/social-6/