Review of F. Fulminante, The Urbanization of Rome and Latium Vetus: From the Bronze Age to the Archaic Era and E. Blake, Social Networks and Regional Identity in Bronze Age Italy (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
The rise of the state in Ancient Italy went hand in hand with an increase in infrastructural power, i.e., settlement centralization and urbanization. The paper discusses theoretical challenges and introduces a modeling approach to a case study, one of the earliest cities in Southern Italy, Pontecagnano, with the aim of understanding the community dynamics at the time of the earliest urbanization (ca. 900-600 BC). The model is a two-mode model that derives from social network analysis, an approach that has been fruitfully adapted to archaeological research. The model is applied to detect trends in burial contexts from the community involved. Burial was, at that time, in the region, a key instrument in the creation of memory and display of status and thus for building and consolidating state power. The analytical network model is able to detect the dynamics in the community over time very well: network Cohesion is expanding and contracting, and points to the existence of tension and a tight control of funerary behavior. The study of Centrality of selected nodes provides a good understanding of the strategies in terms of the circulation of key resources. The latter is particularly significant for studying urbanization because the appropriation of resources was not possible without centralization and the development of infrastructure, as well as an ideology. Based on the study of selected resources, it is suggested that an increase in crop storage has played a particular role in the development of state power and the urbanization process at Pontecagnano. In due course, the paper also addresses methodological challenges of working with fragmented datasets when applying models to study the past.
Internet Archaeology, 2015
This article describes the methodology of a two-year research project to create an analytical database and GIS of 583 (proto-)urban centres on the Italian peninsula that existed between 350 BCE and 300 CE. The article is linked to the project's data files, deposited with the ADS, and is essential reading for users of the database. The research design, format and functionality of the database are described in conjunction with the challenges encountered during the methodological development of the project. The relevance of the project to the historical development of urbanism on the Italian peninsula during the period under study is outlined. An overview of the project's results provides an insight into the potential of the research methodology. It is relevant to anyone interested in ancient urbanism, Italian and Roman archaeology, or in the methods and results of combining ancient textual and archaeological legacy data with geospatial data. Keywords: higher-order settlements; towns; cities; proto-urban; Roman urbanism; pre-Roman Italy; Italian peninsula; analytical database; GIS Archive: ROMURBITAL-an archaeological database of higher-order settlements on the Italian peninsula (350 BCE to 300 CE)
The book under review is in line with the growing popularity of Social Network Analysis in archaeology. The Mediterranean region in particular is witnessing a surge in studies on ancient networks and their significance for cultural development in different regions and periods. The importance of maritime connectivity has eloquently been made clear by N. Horden and P. Purcell,1 C. Broodbank2 and several others. Social Network Analysis is emerging as a powerful tool to quantitatively map and evaluate connectivity and its effects on material culture.3 Time will tell whether this popularity of Social Network Analysis constitutes a veritable paradigm shift in the study of the ancient Mediterranean. But it does lead to new perspectives on established fields in archaeology, of which this book is an example.
A GIS Approach to Urban History: Rome in the 18th Century.
This article explores the integration of GIS technology with urban historical studies, focusing on one case study from the 18th century, the project Historical atlas of the modern Rome. The methodology employed in this project allows for effectiveness and accuracy in historical data acquisition and integration, which enables refined analyses of socioeconomic and environmental phenomena. The approach outlined in this article allowed researchers from different disciplines—city historians, archaeologists, demographists, economists, and so on—to interpret urban phenomenologies according to different thematic keys. These interpretations were derived from archival sources that complement each other and offer diversified insights into the urban context. The techniques described in the article are based on methods of data acquisition and spatial analysis developed in a GIS environment by exploiting the effectiveness of this technology in the quantitative treatment of cartographic and documentary sources.
2010
be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the editors of this book. 6. nkn y k-nn nn n n y 6.1 Introduction 6.2 The hegemony of Sybaris 6.3 Iron Age indigenous settlement expansion and early indigenous-Greek encounters 6.4 A colonial enclave and its wider context: Taras and the Salento peninsula 6.5 Questioning early Greek colonial impact Box 6.1 Greeks and natives at L'Amastuola 7. nn bnzn n p 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Archaic urbanization in the Salento peninsula 7.3 Urbanization and early Roman colonization in the Pontine region 7.4 Conclusion 8. nf, bnzn n n xpnn 8.1 Roman conquest and colonization 8.2 Rural settlement 8.3 Urban development 8.4 Rural infill and the expansion of agriculture 8.5 Local variability in rural trends 8.6 Comparing rural settlement patterns in Central and South Italy 8.7 Exploring a macro-regional explanation 8.8 Epilogue: late Republican agriculture and the city of Rome 9. p-n pv ppv 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Methodological advances 9.3 Interpretations 9.4 Final remarks Bibliographic references Index Colour plates pf This volume synthesizes the results of a Dutch landscape-archaeological project in central and southern Italy, called Regional Pathways to Complexity (RPC). Although the project itself started in 1997 and formally ended in 2001, it is correctly viewed as only the latest in a long series of archaeological research projects by the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (GIA) and the Archaeological Centre of the Free University of Amsterdam (ACVU) in Italy. Accordingly, this volume synthesizes studies undertaken since the early 1980s as well as others conducted in the years since the RPC project ended. 1 A study of central and southern Italy between the end of the Bronze Age and the end of the Roman Republican period presents several major challenges: the size of the region, the length of the period under investigation, and especially the difficulty to investigate effectively the long-term processes operating at this time in this area, processes that involved the growing complexity of indigenous societies, and the transformation of traditional rural and pastoral ways of life into urbanism during the period of 'external' Greek and Roman colonization. Our purpose was not only to synthesize the results of the fieldwork, but also to present interpretations of and reflections on these processes, the approaches we used to investigate them, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the theoretical models applied by ourselves and others to explain our findings. This is why the introductory and concluding chapters contain extensive discussions of methodology. It is hoped that the RPC experience, once published, will be of interest to others pursuing similar studies. f bk Chapter 1 introduces the RPC project itself and provides an outline of its methodology. The chapter discusses, firstly, the integration of settlement archaeology, environmental research, ethnography and ceramics studies; and, secondly, the problems presented by, on the one hand, systematic biases in the archaeological record and, on the other, by our attempt to compare differently constituted regional archaeological records. The remainder of the volume is organised into two parts, the first (chapters 2 to 4) being arranged chronologically by region, the second (chapters 5 to 8) chronologically by theme. A final chapter pulls together the main threads and conclusions of our argument. The first few chapters deal with each of the three RPC regions in turn (chapter 2: Pontine region, chapter 3: Salento isthmus, chapter 4: Sibaritide). Each chapter begins with a reconstruction of the principal geographical and environmental factors that influenced the forms of human habitation and land use. This is followed by a chronologically ordered discussion of actual settlement configurations and land use patterns, based on comparisons of the various field surveys and other settlement data. Each chapter sets out to describe the intra-regional differentiation in settlement and land use in relation to geography and environment. Together, these chapters provide a general context for the thematic and chronological comparison of the three RPC study regions in part II. The later chapters deal with the major changes that occurred in our three regions between the Bronze Age and the Roman Imperial period. Chapter 5 is dedicated to the protohistorical phases, with a particular focus on the formation of proto-urban centres and 'rural infill' of the landscape prior to Greek 1 All Dutch research up to 2005 in the three study areas has been included in the current study, as well as important publications up to 2008. or Roman colonization. Chapter 6 looks more closely at the earliest colonizations, investigating the impact of Greek colonization on indigenous settlement and society and questioning the presumed political and cultural dominance of the Greek colonial city-states. Chapter 7 focuses on Archaic urbanisation processes in Salento and the Pontine region. Chapter 8 explores the phenomenon of rural expansion that accompanied the process of urbanization in Italy in the Hellenistic (or Roman Republican) period, and in particular in the late 4 th-3 rd centuries BC; it closes with an epilogue dedicated to further transformations during the late Republican period. knwn The RPC project was one of three large archaeological projects that received funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research in 1997, in the context of the programme 'Settlement and Landscape in Archaeology' (NWO grant no. 250-09-100). We are extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to pursue this line of research, as well as for NWO's patience when this final synthetic volume was delayed. Likewise, the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR) has steadfastly supported RPC project staff and students of the participating institutions over the years by hosting meetings and study visits. We are especially grateful for the Institute's sponsorship of this publication, which together with smaller subsidies by GIA and ACVU made possible both proper editing of the English text, and the use of colour for the maps and photographs. Several colleagues from both participating institutions have been closely involved in the research for many years, and we wish to acknowledge our debt to their work, enthusiasm and expertise: Dr. Bert Nijboer for sharing with us his extensive knowledge of protohistoric Italy, Prof. Douwe Yntema for his expertise on Apulian archaeology and supervision of the dissertations of Veenman and Mater, Prof. em. Marianne Kleibrink for first directing the excavation programs at Satricum and Francavilla and then sharing her profound knowledge of the archaeology of Latium and the Sibaritide, Dr. Jan Sevink for his supervision of Van Joolen's dissertation, and Dr. Jan Delvigne for his supervision of students and especially for the enjoyable and insightful field trips at which we learned a lot about the past and present landscapes of the Pontine Region and the Sibaritide. Other colleagues contributed toward the success of the RPC project through their participation in a 3-day conference organised by the
In this paper I’d like to put typochronological networks (in short, ‘typo-networks’) forward as a means to get to grips with Bronze Age sequences in the Italian peninsula in terms of connectivity and network changes. ‘Typo-networks’ constitute a form of network analysis that visualises the relationships between site assemblages emerging from (but often remaining implicit in) typological classification of ceramics. In the case of the Bronze Age sequences in the Italian peninsula it highlights regional differentiation in terms of the presence or (virtual) absence of ceramics attributed to particular (sub)phases. Instead of taking a lack of ceramic connectivity at face value (either a past reality or a research bias) I will interpret ‘gaps’ as a strong indication of regional differentiation in Bronze Age sequences. Consequently, particular (sub)phases cannot be regarded as consecutive in Bronze Age sequences, because the spatial dimensions of their ‘typo-networks’ are complementary. This indicates such a high degree of overlap that contemporaneity of (sub)phases is likely (in the sense of regional traditions of ceramics). Chronological overlap requires ‘time-transgressive’ mapping, in order to get networks and trajectories right. This does not only shed a different light on the course, but also on the pace of network changes that make up Bronze Age trajectories in the Italian peninsula. In particular, ‘time-transgressive’ mapping of ‘typo-networks’ gives a better impression of changes in land-based networks and their relation to seaborne connectivity.
during the last few decades a number of traditional disciplines among the humanities, such as history, art history, ancient history, archaeology and historical archaeology have witnessed a significant growth of interest in social network analysis, which had previously principally confined to the fields of anthropology, sociology and social geography. In particular, within archaeology various applications have shown that social network analysis can provide a useful set of theoretical and technical tools to answer a variety of spatial as well as social questions and more importantly a combination of the two. While a number of case studies with practical examples have concerned pre-historical or fully historical societies, the potential of social network analysis for the study of the emergence of complex polities has only been used as a metaphor for interpretation rather than an analytical tool.
Homogeneization of the Archaeological Cartographic Data on a National Scale in Italy
2016
For decades now standardization, homogenization, and harmonization of digital archaeological cartographic data in Italy has been a major topic of debate. The complex organization of state agencies, heterogeneously structured on different operational levels causes a disruption of the archaeological georeferenced information, one of the main problems that the SITAN (National Archaeological Geographic Information System) project aims to simplify and bring back to shared tools and languages. The paper will focus on the peculiarities of the ‘producers of information’, the different typology of data acquired and yet to be acquired, the possibilities of using them, and on forms of cooperation undertaken or in progress with different actors operating in the Sardinian regional context. A turbulent environment, in which the difference is more acute between protection of public property and the profit of private interests — a heated public debate strongly felt and discussed through the media.
The urban structure of Rome between history and modern times.
The increasing use of computer technologies in projects involving the acquisition, documentation and communication of cultural heritage has led to a fast and ever more high demands of standards and methodologies in order to create best practices models. In the past years, in Europe it has been recorded a considerable interest in the digitization of Cultural Heritage and the creation of databases shared on the network (EUROPEANA, CARARE, 3D Icons), in the implementation of policies for the identification of shared global standards (EPOCH, MINERVA) and in the application of Web Gis (MAPPA, Mapping Gothic France). The research we project suits with this debate by proposing an innovative methodology for the investigation of the urban heritage. It should be able to document and represent the transformations that the city had during the time and the aim is to experiment a new methodology of knowledge and representation of the city.