Roads and Rivers: The Importance of Regional Transportation Networks for Early Urbanization in Central Italy

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ancient regional routes were vital for interactions between settlements and deeply influenced the development of past societies and their “complexification” (e.g., urbanization). For example, terrestrial routes required resources and inter-settlement cooperation to be established and maintained, and can be regarded as an epiphenomenon of social interactions. Similarly, navigable rivers provided a complementary inter-settlement connectivity, which conditioned the development of roads and pathways. In this sense, fluvial and terrestrial connections can be seen as the two layers of an integrated regional transportation system, which was the product of social relations and of the interplay between past societies and environment. This paper discusses transportation networks and interactions in central Italy (1000–500 BC) at a time of changes and developments in the Italian Peninsula, which led to the creation of regional ethnic and political groups and to the formation of the first city-states in Western Europe. To better understand emerging Latin and Etruscan urban polities and the mechanisms underlying their variable success, we adopt a novel network approach (modeling and multiplex networks). The results shed new light on how Latin and Etruscan polities emerged and functioned, and also suggest potentially why in the end Rome prevailed over its rival.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Regional Settlement Networks Analysis: A Global Comparison

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33002