settlement and land-use dynamics in early italy from the bronze age to the republican period Regional Pathways to Complexity Archaeological Studies P.A.J. Attema, G.-J. Burgers, P.M. van Leusen van P.M. Burgers, G.-J. Attema, P.A.J. Amsterdam University Press 15 Amsterdam Amsterdam Regional Pathways to Complexity 15 Editorial Board: Prof. dr. E.M. Moormann Prof. dr. P.A.J. Attema Prof. dr. N. Roymans Prof. dr. F. Theuws Other titles in the series: N. Roymans (ed.): From the Sword to the Plough Three Studies on the Earliest Romanisation of Northern Gaul ISBN 90 5356 237 0 T. Derks: Gods, Temples and Ritual Practices The Transformation of Religious Ideas and Values in Roman Gaul ISBN 90 5356 254 0 A. Verhoeven: Middeleeuws gebruiksaardewerk in Nederland (8e – 13e eeuw) ISBN 90 5356 267 2 F. Theuws / N. Roymans (eds): Land and Ancestors Cultural Dynamics in the Urnfield Period and the Middle Ages in the Southern Netherlands ISBN 90 5356 278 8 J. Bazelmans: By Weapons made Worthy Lords, Retainers and Their Relationship in Beowulf ISBN 90 5356 325 3 R. Corbey / W. Roebroeks (eds): Studying Human Origins Disciplinary History and Epistemology ISBN 90 5356 464 0 M. Diepeveen-Jansen: People, Ideas and Goods New Perspectives on ‘Celtic barbarians’ in Western and Central Europe (500-250 BC) ISBN 90 5356 481 0 G. J. van Wijngaarden: Use and Appreciation of Mycenean Pottery in the Levant, Cyprus and Italy (ca. 1600-1200 BC) The Significance of Context ISBN 90 5356 482 9 F.A. Gerritsen: Local Identities Landscape and community in the late prehistoric Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region ISBN 90 5356 588 4 N. Roymans: Ethnic Identity and Imperial Power The Batavians in the Early Roman Empire ISBN 90 5356 705 4 J.A.W. Nicolay: Armed Batavians Use and significance of weaponry and horse gear from non-military contexts in the Rhine delta (50 bc to ad 450) ISBN 978 90 5356 253 6 M. Groot: Animals in ritual and economy in a Roman frontier community Excavations in Tiel-Passewaaij ISBN 978 90 8964 0 222 T. Derks & N. Roymans: Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity The role of power and tradition ISBN 978 90 8964 078 9 Tesse D. Stek: Cult places and cultural change in Republican Italy A contextual approach to religious aspects of rural society after the Roman conquest ISBN 978 90 8964 177 9 Regional Pathways to Complexity settlemen n lan- yn n y italy from bronz age to pbn p p eter . j . , ert-j n . . b urgers & p . artijn vn n msterdam nvy p This book meets the requirements of ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation – Paper for documents – Requirements for permanence. Cover illustration: Stele from the Archaic necropolis of L’Amastuola (Crispiano, TA), photo Bert Brouwenstijn. Cover design: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam Lay-out: Bert Brouwenstijn, ACVU Amsterdam ISBN 978 90 8964 276 9 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 344 4 NUR 682 © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2010 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may 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. connts p f 1. i ntroduction 1 1.1 Background 3 1.2 Approaches 11 1.3 Issues in regional landscape archaeology 19 Box 1.1 Case study: fabric analysis in southern Lazio 17 Box 1.2 Case study: visibility and other bias factors in the surface archaeological record of the Sibaritide 21 Box 1.3 Modelling settlement hierarchy and territories 26 2. n n yn f p nn n 31 2.1 Introduction 31 2.2 Environmental studies 32 2.3 Land systems and the archaeological record 40 2.4 Concluding discussion 57 Box 2.1 Pollen studies in the Pontine region 36 Box 2.2 Colluviation and alluviation in the Pontine Plain 41 3. n n yn f nto 59 3.1 Introduction 59 3.2 Environmental studies: sedimentation, climate and anthropogenic impact 60 3.3 Land systems and the archaeological record 62 3.4 Concluding discussion 79 4. n yn f b n nterlan 81 4.1 Introduction 81 4.2 Environment and historic land use 82 4.3 Settlement and land use in the coastal plain 89 4.4 Protohistorical centralization in the foothills 91 4.5 The contribution of field survey: the Raganello Archaeological Project 100 4.6 Conclusion 103 Box 4.1 Pollen evidence for Bronze Age pastoralism 85 Box 4.2 Research and visibility biases of the Sibaritide hinterland 102 5. ntralizn n p roto-bnzn n b ronz n n 107 5.1 Introduction 107 5.2 Differing regional pathways to complexity in protohistory 108 5.3 Conclusion 117 Box 5.1 Indicators of socio-economic complexity in the Sibaritide 114 6. nkn y k - nn ncoun n n y 119 6.1 Introduction 119 6.2 The hegemony of Sybaris 120 6.3 Iron Age indigenous settlement expansion and early indigenous - Greek encounters 122 6.4 A colonial enclave and its wider context: Taras and the Salento peninsula 124 6.5 Questioning early Greek colonial impact 01 Box 6.1 Greeks and natives at L’Amastuola 129 7. nn bnzn n p 135 7.1 Introduction 135 7.2 Archaic urbanization in the Salento peninsula 135 7.3 Urbanization and early Roman colonization in the Pontine region 140 7.4 Conclusion 145 8. nf, bnzn n n xpnn 147 8.1 Roman conquest and colonization 147 8.2 Rural settlement 149 8.3 Urban development 150 8.4 Rural infill and the expansion of agriculture 152 8.5 Local variability in rural trends 155 8.6 Comparing rural settlement patterns in Central and South Italy 160 8.7 Exploring a macro-regional explanation 164 8.8 Epilogue: late Republican agriculture and the city of Rome 166 9. pra-n pv p pv 171 9.1 Introduction 171 9.2 Methodological advances 171 9.3 Interpretations 176 9.4 Final remarks 179 Bibliographic references 181 Index 199 Colour plates 205 p f 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 for- mally 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 oper- ating 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 b ook 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 prin- cipal 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 tant publications up to 2008. has been included in the current study, as well as impor- or Roman colonization.