This book gives an overview of different factors involved in the emergence and change in early urban societies in fourth-millennium Mesopotamia and Egypt; pre-Shang China; Classie horizon Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya Area; and Middle Horizon societies in the Andean Region. These factors range from centralized storage and redistributive econo- mies, agromanagerial models, mercantile network control, confliet and conquest, conversion of military commanders into administrators, political power through monumental cosmic reproduction, and elite power through ideological change. It...