The organisation of public spaces in the rising polis: the example of Archaic Corinth

In the formative stage of the polis, a phenomenon that occurred in the Greek world from the 9th to the 7th centuries B.C., a new form of settlement spatiality emerged: the haphazard layout of Early Iron Age settlements was replaced in the Archaic period by a new con guration characterised by more formal internal organisation, dividing the settlement area into distinct, functionally de ned spaces. The ideology of the polis is based on a social identity, which entailed both integration and distinction and the development of new forms of plurality and complexity: a stronger distinction between the collective and individuals, between the community and household, led to a new way of living together. The process of the nucleation of a territory, caused by rising population levels and the emergence of a central site, resulted in a new spatial con guration, based generally on a centralised settlement system. This main site became the core of the urban space, where the most important public places of the new type of settlement were established, in which the identity of the nascent community manifested itself. The question of the emergence of such public spaces in the nascent polis is nonetheless not so simple: it depended on a variety of factors. In order to identify the causes that led to a new organisation of space at this formative stage, we must consider a variety of changes and factors. In this chapter, we hope to formulate a reasonable view of the varied forces that felicitously converged to produce this new settlement con guration.