Network Models for the Emergence of Transportation Infrastructures in Central Italy (1175/1150─500 BC ca)

Summary

The period between the Late Bronze Age and the Archaic Age is a time of change and development in the Italian Peninsula, leading to the formation of the first city-states.

In this study, we focused on the Tyrrhenian regions of Latium Vetus and Southern Etruria, by analyzing the emergence of the network of terrestrial routes as it has been inferred from archaeological evidences. Our goal was to explore the mechanisms that shaped the overall structure of these past transportation infrastructures.

To this end, we designed network models corresponding to three competing hypotheses about the dominant mechanism underlying the creation of new connections. After comparing several synthetic networks generated by those models with the corresponding empirical systems, we obtained different outcomes for each of the two regions. In the case of Southern Etruria, the model simulating a simple form of cooperation was able to accurately reproduce all the relevant features of the network for the whole period under study. On the contrary, for Latium Vetus, each model could reproduce only some of the features at some of the ages. However, if we add a "rich get richer" bias to the cooperative model, its performance improved significantly.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22436