The death of a city is not always a deliberate destruction of a city through war. It is also a recurring disruption within longer urban histories in which human societies repeatedly erase, rebuild, and transform their built environments.

This is the twenty-fifth and final episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

Palmyra’s funerary portraits allow us to gaze upon a desert city’s elite and explore how they used sculpture to negotiate identity, power, and change across centuries of trade and empire.

This is the twenty-fourth episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

Excavations at Jerash’s “peripheral” Northwest Quarter reveals how everyday domestic life, industry, and innovation were woven into the city’s fabric before being abruptly frozen by the earthquake of 749 AD.

This is the twenty-third episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

Archaeology can be transformed through archival research. Like the unboxing of Harald Ingholt’s Palmyra archive, it can reveal how stored notes, photographs, and drawings preserve and reshape the study of an ancient desert city.

This is the twenty-second episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

The suburbs and their sprawl might feel like a modern development, but recent archaeological research suggest that cities and countryside often blended into something known as “patch urbanism.”

This is the twenty-first episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

Archaeology of ancient cities reveals how urban life, not rural necessity, inspired innovation through the dense networks of people, skills, and exchange that come together in urban centres.

This is the twentieth episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

Humans have had to live alongside rats for millennia, and archaeology can study these little vermin to uncover how ancient cities lived, traded, and changed over time.

This is the nineteenth episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

Archaeology reveals how ancient urban life was sustained and shaped by visible and hidden green spaces, from elite villas to public parks and buried traces of cultivation within city fabrics.

This is the eighteenth episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

Archaeology of urban discovery shows how new sites, from colonial-era excavations to modern LiDAR surveys, they reveal previously unknown urban worlds.

This is the seventeenth episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.

What’s in an ending? Usually it is much more complicated than just ceasing to exist. Archaeology reveals that narratives of collapse often obscure long patterns of adaptation, reuse, and continuity in urban life rather than marking definitive endings.

This is the sixteenth episode of Urban Opinion, a podcast where we dive into the fascinating world of past cities.

This podcast is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It is based on columns written by Rubina Raja and Søren Sindbæk, originally published in Current World Archaeology magazine. Find out more at the-past.com.

The research is based on work conducted at the DNRF-funded Center for Urban Network Evolutions, based at Aarhus University. Thanks to Matthew Symonds of CWA. Idea development by Rubina Raja, Sine Saxkjær, and Julia Steding. Logo design by Sine Saxkjær. Produced by Videnslyd and hosted by Eleanor Quasebarth Neil.