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Download the app today. Hi everybody from Wundere. Welcome to another episode of Tides of History. I'm Patrick

Wyman. Thanks so much for being here with me today.

One of the hallmarks of the Iron Age all across the Mediterranean world and beyond is the process of

urbanization. People built cities dotting the landscape with dense collections of houses and monumental buildings

served as centers of trade, craft production, and political power.

Everywhere from Greece to Phoenicia to Italy and beyond, cities to find much of what made the Iron Age

distinctive and became the cultural and economic bedrock for the classical age that followed.

But how did this process of urbanization actually happen?

And how did it differ from place to place?

Was the growth of cities driven by the same causes and needs and did it proceed according

to the same template in, say, Greece and the Phoenician world? What about Greece and Italy?

These are essential questions if we want to understand not only the Iron Age Mediterranean but

also the emergence of cities in a global perspective. There aren't many scholars out there who have thought

harder about these kinds of questions or applied more innovative approaches to answering them

than today's guest. Simon Stoddart is professor of prehistory at the University of Cambridge where he's also a fellow,

director of studies, and keeper of pictures at Magdalene College.

He's one of the world's leading experts in the archaeological study of urbanization in the Iron Age Mediterranean,

and more specifically in Etruria,

where he's conducted field work for many years.

Professor Stoddart's list of publications is long.

Most recently, he published a really excellent book entitled

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