Paper short abstract:

The landscape concept in” Ancient Near East” archaeology is still beyond the urban theory due to the nature of the archaeological research.

Paper long abstract:

Urban discourse in the " Ancient Near East" archaeology is totally materialized by the modern western thought, the priority of these discourses is to syntheses the ancient cities within the grand theories in order to construct the universal schema of the city, state, and empire formation ; which contributes to minimize the ancient cities landscapes .

The paper will basically discuss the hierarchical binary structure of the urban grand theories, and their formation in" Ancient Near East" archaeology from antiquarianism in to postmodernism archaeology. One of the binary opposition in urban discourse is the center dominate over boundary , so the archaeologists made an effort to explore the elitist centers in cities , such as temples , palaces, cementers , and public buildings , since they reflect the power of the elite , on the contrary the boundaries of t he cities are usually absent .

Also this paper will explore the binary opposition of time dominated over space ; through analyzing how the archaeologists subordinate the ancient cities ( space ) in chronological sequence of the state formation , and utilize landscape as a geopolitical container in order to illustrate the rising and falling process of the ancient cities in landscape, to explain the political changes in state formation and reformation . Finally the paper tries to breakdown these binaries of the grand theories in the "ancient near east" archaeology, through re-examining theoretically the boundaries and space of the ancient cities that might lead to re- theorizing city landscapes