Urban Life in the Distant Past: The Prehistory of Energized Crowding. Michael E. Smith. 2023. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. $130.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-00924-904-1; $130.00 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-00924-901-0

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. $130.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-00924-904-1 ; $130.00 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-00924-901-0. In his words, these interactions “amplify the results of individual social interactions, resulting in a variety of social and economic changes and outcomes, both positive and negative” (p. 35). [...]recent studies of early Mesoamerican cities show that ritual events were the bases for early aggregation that resulted in the growth of settlements and the first steps toward urbanization. [...]the first urban centers were most often newly formed communities resulting from the aggregation of people of diverse identities. The book is the first in a new series published by Cambridge University Press in collaboration with the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) at Aarhus University in Denmark.