The Judeo-Christian historical tradition as it relates to the physical, spiritual, and social characteristics of the city is pervasive in the Western intellectual tradition. The Yahwistic attitude towards the city is mirrored precisely by the writings of such disparate sources as Weber, Wittfogel, Engels, and Spengler. In this Yahwist tradition, the city is a spiritually bankrupt monolith in which free will is absent from a population enslaved by monarchy. The city is an instrument by which the despot maintains order. This Yahwistic view translates into an expectation that a city will be a place where elaborate social hierarchy are expressed, with city walls to contain the enslaved populace and massive structures to establish divine right of rule of the despot. The excavation of African, Chinese and Mesopotamian heterarchically clustered urban sites demonstrates a physical and social organization differing from what Western academia has defined as necessary for a city. This suggests that archaeologists must accept that many alternative social contracts were experimented with during the development of pre-industrial urbanism.