Excerpt:

>It is easy to forget the unprecedented nature of Trypillia megasites. During the 5th and 4th millennia BC in Eurasia, Trypillia megasites were unique in size and scale.

>Nowhere else on the planet in 4200 BC compared to the megasite of Vesely Kut, in south-central Ukraine, covering an area of 150 ha.

>While major parts of the megasite plans have been produced at Taljanki and Majdanetske, the Nebelivka Project has produced the only complete megasite plan so far, with a site area of 238 ha inside a shallow perimeter ditch.

>The characterization of the category ‘urban’ in the Trypillian context in general, and Nebelivka in particular, has nine constituents — the territory to which a site is central, site size, population numbers, population heterogeneity, the concentration of skilled labour and management, the built environment and formalized spaces with special functions, the scale of subsistence, the potential to be a node and re-distribution centre in a wide-reaching exchange network and the overall social structure.

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>The social, economic and personal implications of living on a small 4.5 ha and the rare >150 ha sites are so different that there was no possibility that the Nebelivka megasite was simply a very large example of a typical small rural settlement.

>It is only in the last 10 years that the significance of a certain class of sites has finally been recognized.

>In contrast to the classic high-density cities such as London, Paris and Berlin, low-density urban sites displayed variable population densities across their much larger area.

>Low-density urbanism was initially recognised by Roland Fletcher and is now an acknowledged alternative trajectory of urban development in most regions in the world.

Bisserka Gaydarska and John Chapman, 30 November 2020.