Riva, C; (2014) Connectivity beyond the urban community in central Italy. In: The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean. (pp. 437-453). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.

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Abstract

Two significant recent developments concerning the archaeology of Iron Age central Italy call for a fresh analysis of settlement dynamics in the region and their relations vis-à-vis one another. The first development is the reconsideration of ancient urban centres as single entities, and the need, which has mostly been advocated for the Classical and later historical Mediterranean, to examine the systems or networks within which these centres functioned. The second development is the increasing amount of fieldwork-based research in those regions that have been situated at the margins of scholarly interest. New data from such research increasingly allow us to see the networks or systems that linked these regions to better-known ones on the Tyrrhenian coast. Such developments enable us to reassess the importance traditionally given to the core urban area of central Italy, and to offer a more balanced framework for understanding the exchange dynamics among Iron Age Central Italian communities. This chapter intends to do precisely that, and in so doing, its aim is twofold: first, to decentralise central Italy in line with studies on other Mediterranean regions that have similarly dispelled distinctions between core urban areas and non-urban peripheries; second, to shift attention away from evolutionary and other categories towards a perspective that stresses connectivity and patterns of human mobility.

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