Graeber / Wengrow 277: "In some regions, we now know, cities governed themselves for centuries without any sign of the temples and palaces that would only emerge later; in others. temples and palaces never emerged at all. In many early cities, there is simply no evidence of either a class of administrators or any other sort of ruling stratum."
"It would seem that the mere fact of urban life does not, necessarily, imply any particular form of political organization, and never did."
recapped on 322: in multiple cases, covered in this chapter, "a dramatic increase in the scale of organized human settlement took place with no resulting concentration of wealth or power in the hands of ruling elites. In short, archaeological research has shifted the burden of proof onto those theorists who claim cuasal connections between the origins of cities and the rise of stratified states, and whose claims now look increasingly hollow."