INTRODUCING ANCIENT ITALY
THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ITALY
Italy is a Mediterranean country located in southern Europe. It is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the east coast, the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west or Mediterranean coast, and the Ionian Sea to the south. It comprises the iconic long, boot-shaped Italian Peninsula, the southern side of the Alps, the large plain of the Po Valley, and some islands including Sicily and Sardinia. The country is often referred to as “the boot,” with the Apuglia region in the southeast being the “heel” and the Calabria region in the southwest being the “toe.”
Almost 40 percent of the Italian territory is mountainous, with the Alps as the northern boundary, and the Apennine Mountains forming the backbone of the peninsula and extending for 1,350 km. In between the two lies the largest plain in Italy, the Po Valley, which derives its name from the Po River, the largest river in Italy, which flows 652 km eastward from the Cottian Alps to the Adriatic. The Po Valley represents over 70 percent of the total plain area in the country. In the north of the country are a number of subalpine moraine-dammed lakes, the largest of which is Garda, famous for its dramatic landscape and for outstanding prehistoric archaeological remains. The prehistoric pile dwellings (palafitte in Italian) of the Alps are settlements always situated in the immediate vicinity of lakes or rather humid environments characterized by a great abundance of water. These settlements, dispersed throughout Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Slovenia, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. Of the 111 Palafitte sites inscribed in the World Heritage List, 19 lie within Italy, located in five different regions: Lombardy (10), Veneto (4), Piedmont (2), Friuli Venezia Giulia (1), and Trentino Alto Adige (2).1 The fascinating aspect of the pile dwellings are the piles themselves: huts of straw, wood, cane, and other materials built into a wooden platform supported by wooden stilts that run to the beds of rivers, lakes, and lagoons; swamp-land; and, sometimes, of dry land. The pile dwellings convey an accurate and detailed image of the world of Europe’s first agricultural communities. Thanks to the anaerobic conditions that allow for an outstanding preservation of organic materials, the Palafitte are living photographs of everyday life, narrating the farming and livestock breeding carried out by prehistoric communities, as well as providing information regarding technological innovations and the social structure of prehistoric people.
Figure 1.1. Satellite caption of Italy and the Mediterranean Sea. Eric Gaba (Sting)–Screenshot from NASA World Wind (retouched), Pubblico dominio, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150902
The backbone of Italy is formed by the north-south trending Apennine chain, which played a crucial role in both connecting and dividing western and eastern shores, and central and southern Italy by means of transhumance since at least the Middle Bronze Age. Starting from the second millennium BC, short-term and long-term movements in the Apennine Mountains were crucial in the context of an economy structured around transhumant pastoralism. Transhumance would have facilitated interactions between groups on either side of the mountains, meeting in the high meadows in the summer months, negotiating for access to pasturage. This would explain the similarities in material culture, especially pottery, across the Apennines from the Middle Bronze Age on. According to some scholars, however, long-term movements of flocks of sheep, especially along the north-south axis, would have started only later, around the second century BC, when a state-level authority would have granted safe passage to shepherds and their flocks.2 Ideas of the predominantly pastoral economy of the Central Apennines have also been used to account for some of the images of this area that recur in Roman literature: poverty, marginality, and nonurban settlements. The connection between pastoralism and primitivism is one that was made frequently in antiquity. Indeed, pastoralism was considered to be characteristic of a pre-civilized existence, and used to represent a former stage in a now civilized society like Rome or to characterize other societies in a negative way. Conversely, agriculture was linked in the classical society to an ideal stage of development and civilization. Within Roman ideology of the Late Republic and Early Empire, small farmers are of particular moral importance since they were considered to live away from contemporary influences and make excellent soldiers. The connection between pastoralism and poverty seems implicit in several accounts as the topos of poverty, which recurs in satirical references to peoples of the central Apennines in literature of the Late Republic and Early Empire reminds us.3
Until some decades ago, large flocks of sheep were still driven south in mid-fall from the hilly and mountainous regions of the Apennines to winter over in the more southern coastal plains of Apulia and Lazio. In mid-spring of each year this migratory pattern was reversed as the herds traveled to the fresher and greener pastures of the higher Apennine elevations in the Abruzzi region. The well-worn paths along which the sheep traveled during their migrations were referred to as tratturi. Today transhumance survives only in the most remote areas of central and southern Italy.
Many geographic features of the Italian territory are of volcanic origin. Most of the small islands and archipelagos in the south, like Ponza, Ischia, Aeolian Islands, Ustica, and Pantelleria are volcanic islands. Etna, in Sicily, is the largest active volcano in Europe, while Vesuvius, near Naples, is the only active volcano in mainland Europe. Mount Vesuvius is one of several volcanoes that form the Campanian volcanic arc. It consists of a large cone partially encircled by the steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and originally much higher structure. Its most famous eruption took place in the year 79 AD, when the volcano buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii under a thick carpet of volcanic ash.
Figure 1.2. Map showing the Vesuvio area and the sites reached by the 79 AD eruption. MapMaster–Opera propria, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2920590
Pompeii was founded in the seventh or sixth century BC by the Osci, came under the domination of Rome in the fourth century BC, and was conquered and became a Roman colony in 80 BC after it joined an unsuccessful rebellion against the Roman Republic. By the time of its destruction, 160 years later, its population was estimated at eleven thousand people, and the city had a complex water system, an amphitheater, a gymnasium, and a port. Evidence for the Pompeii destruction originally came from a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger, who saw the eruption from a distance and described the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, an admiral of the Roman fleet, who tried to rescue citizens.
Although the fame of Pompeii and Herculaneum is unmatchable, other eruptions of comparable intensity sealed outstanding traces of the past under layers of volcanic debris. In 2001, in the immediate outskirts of Nola, a city some 25 km from Naples, an Early Bronze Age village was discovered buried by a layer caused by the so-called Pomici di Avellino eruption, which dates with radiocarbon to 1900 BC.4 Three huts, which were originally part of a larger settlement, were found six meters from the surface, next to an enclosed area probably intended to host animals. No human remains were recovered, only animal ones. Probably the inhabitants fled at the time of eruption, leaving most of their belongings behind. After the fall of gray pumice that covered the huts without causing their collapse, a wave of mud penetrated slowly within the structures, providing a counterforce to the pumice accumulated on the outside and allowing for the preservation of the walls to a height of 1.30 m. The consolidated mud has produced a cast of the huts and a negative of the items found there such as wood and wickerwork containers, clothes, and ropes.
Today Vesuvius is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of three million people living nearby and its tendency toward violent, explosive eruptions, making it the most densely populated volcanic region in the world.
RESOURCES AND NETWORKS OF ANCIENT ITALY
Volcanoes are a key geological feature also in terms of resources, the most peculiar being obsidian from the Aeolian Islands. These islands form a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily, named after the demigod of the winds, Aeolus. The present shape of the Aeolian Islands is the result of volcanic activity over a period of 260,000 years. There are two active volcanoes: Stromboli and Vulcano. The last recorded eruptions occurred in the fifth century AD, when airborne pumice, together with volcanic ashes, covered the Roman villages of the island. The volcanoes are considered active, and steaming fumaroles and hydrothermal activity may still be seen.
Obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock, is produced when lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. Its high silica content causes a high viscosity which, upon rapid cooling, forms a natural glass from the lava. Obsidian is hard, brittle, and amorphous, and fractures with very sharp edges. In pre-history it was used to manufacture cutting and piercing tools. Pure obsidian is usually dark in appearance, though the color varies depending on the presence of impurities, and of glassy quality far finer than flint. This characteristic made obsidian widely desirable in prehistory.
The known eruptions producing obsidian used for stone tools by prehistoric people occurred on northern Lipari (today the area is known as Monte Pilato Volcano) by the Gabellotto-Fiume Bianco system, almost nine thousand years ago. In the year 729 AD according to the testimony of a monk from Sussex, the Monte Pilato volcano awoke with a powerful cycle of eruptions that covered in volcanic ash both the prehistoric settlements and the obsidian flows present during the Neolithic. The violent medieval explosion formed a new cone, together with high-altitude deposits of pumice. The identification of possible prehistoric quarries is challenging, as the northeastern slopes of the island of Lipari have undergone a considerable transformation.
The beginning of a stable population in the Aeolian Islands occurred in the Middle Neolithic with the culture of Stentinello. A group of people came from Sicily or Calabria to live on the islands of Lipari and Salina. The pottery of the Stentinello style was impressed and painted in red bands.5
There are only four major deposit areas of obsidian in the central Mediterranean: Lipari and Pantelleria, two of the Aeolian islands; Palmarola, an uninhabited islet in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy; and Monte Arci, an isolated massif in the Uras plain in southwestern Sardinia.
Because all sources in the Aegean and central Mediterranean are on islands, the early circulation of obsidian also provides one of the best indicators of early sea voyages, providing positive evidence of the earliest sea trade in the world. Obsidian use was thought to have begun in the Early Neolithic (sixth millennium BC), although some evidence suggests its use already in some Mesolithic contexts. Lipari obsidian had a broader distribution than that from other central Mediterranean sources, stretching from southern France to Croatia and to northern Italy.6
The production of obsidian in Lipari is very significant for its range of distribution and high levels of standardization. The analyses of obsidian tools that were found across Italy are revealing the importance of this trade and how the distribution of obsidian matches both chronologically and geographically a whole wave that introduced and developed local farming activities in the Italian peninsula and Sicily, and extended to Sardinia and beyond. Obsidian tells us the story of the mechanisms of redistribution that saw, in the Neolithic, artisans operate at short distances, with a redistributive system able to replicate tool production at major sites on these routes, thanks to prepared cores, and subsequently to radiate the tools to smaller sites in the surrounding area. Lipari obsidian is indeed known and regularly used 1,500 kilometers from the island itself. In Lipari, obsidian was quarried in massive quantities largely for export, and the only distinctive trait from the region in which Lipari obsidian is distributed is the larger number of types of lithic tools in obsidian found there. It is not possible to explain Lipari obsidian tools without considering the exchange network that carried them far away.7
Together with obsidian, amber from Sicily was also traveling around the Western Mediterranean as early as the fourth millennium BC, some two thousand years before the appearance of Baltic amber to the Italian Peninsula.
Amber is fossilized tree resin, which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from prehistory to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Early Iron Age Europe witnessed an increase in trade and commerce in amber growing along with that of other materials. Amber was a prized commodity among Italic populations, as shown in its abundant use for decorating and enriching personal jewelry. Amber was a marker for social distinction among the Etruscan elites. A huge quantity of amber from the Baltic was found in the graves of the eighth-century Etruscan elite women, and testifies to the importance of long-standing commerce between Italy and Northern Europe. These graves also contained amber spindles, which were far too delicate to actually be used and served as signs of status.
Etruscans used amber to create masterpieces such as the so-called Morgan Amber, a fifth-century BC Etruscan amber bow of a fibula depicting a couple reclining on a sofa, with the woman in the forefront and the man behind her. The fibula was given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917 by J. Pierpont Morgan. Supposedly it was found in Falconara on the Adriatic coast of the peninsula.
Amber was also widely used in the Classical period. The most important center was Aquileia, a town in northeastern Italy at the head of the Adriatic, where the processing of amber represented a crucial activity in the Roman period. Excavation, however, shows that this area had been of commercial importance as the end of the Baltic amber trade already from the thirteen century BC. Aquileia was founded as a colony by the Romans in 180–181 BC. The colony served as a strategic frontier fortress and was intended to protect the Veneti, who were allies of Rome during the invasion of Hannibal and the Illyrian Wars.
The amber was imported to Aquileia raw, and at least in most cases, worked on site. Then it was exported in the form of ornamental or small plastic objects. Artisans pursued coarse amber in Aquileia, which was exported to the south of the peninsula, where local artisans reworked it. One of the most interesting phenomena for the reconstruction of the commercial network in Classical times is that the Roman artisans exported amber jewels to the same transalpine markets where raw amber was purchased.
Mining and metallurgy were also key resources in Ancient Italy. The introduction of metalworking in Italy is dated to between the Late and final Neolithic and early Eneolithic, when copper awls are found throughout the Italian mainland. During the Late Neolithic, the discovery in the south Alpine Trentino area of ancient mines and metallurgical debris indicates a flourishing metallurgical industry exploiting local mineral resources. The beginning of metals’ use in Sardinia is contemporary with developments on mainland Italy and in the Aeolian islands, areas with which Sardinia was closely linked because of the earlier well-developed trade in obsidian. Although Sardinia only began to produce and use metal at a relatively late date, it became a key metallurgical center during the Bronze Age. Sardinia and Tuscany are both rich in copper and tin.
By the Late Bronze Age, the technique of lost-wax casting was widespread in the eastern and central Mediterranean. Tuscany is also rich in iron, which was crucial for the development of Etruscan and Roman civilizations. The Colline Metallifere (metal-bearing hills) are a mountain-hill group in the Tuscan Antiapennine, and were exploited from the Iron Age to the end of the nineteenth century. Together with Elba Island, the Colline Metallifere form the district known in archaeological studies as Etruria Mineraria.
The Baratti plain, near the Etruscan town of Populonia, was one of the most important metalworking sites in the Mediterranean region in the first millennium BC. Due to the large availability of iron and base metal resources, Populonia became one of the most important towns of Etruria during the period between the sixth century BC and the first century AD. As a testimony to the long-standing metallurgical activity, heaps of iron slag and other metallurgical debris can be found over an area of about 220,000 square meters along the Gulf of Baratti, lying northeast of Populonia. Starting from the end of World War I and up to the 1960s, a huge quantity of iron slag was exploited for re-smelting in modern blast furnaces. The search for ancient slag to be recycled led to the discovery of several archaeological sites, such as the Etruscan Populonia cemeteries in the Baratti plain. Today, several slag heaps can be found in the Gulf of Baratti, although collecting is now strictly prohibited because the area has been included in the Archaeological Park of Baratti and Populonia.
One of the more substantial benefits that accrued to Rome from the conquest of an empire was the acquisition of significant mineral resources. Although rich in iron, Italy could not provide a sufficient supply of the whole range of metals needed by the Roman state, which were vital for the economic and political survival of the empire. Besides evidence for municipal or private ownership of extractive operations, quarries and mines might have been owned publicly, yet were in fact controlled and run by the Roman emperor. Once Rome had gained control over metalliferous regions of the Mediterranean and beyond, the state came to gain considerable revenue from the exploitation of state-owned mineral resources.8
Gold, silver, copper, and tin were the main metals required for coinage throughout the Roman period; however, from the time of Constantine a greater emphasis was put on gold, and the coinage came to be centered on the gold solidus. Not all coins were minted from freshly mined metal: many old coins were returned to the treasury in payment of taxes and were melted down to provide bullion for new issues.9
For the Roman Empire the control of its marble resources was also of high significance: marble was indeed central to the representation of imperial wealth and power. During Roman times, northern Etruria was a key region for marble extraction. The world-famous marmo di Carrara (Carrara marble) is a type of white or blue-gray marble of high quality that is still quarried today. It was known in antiquity as marmo lunense (Luni marble), taking its name from the city of Luna, the frontier town of Etruria and the boundary in imperial times between Etruria and Liguria. The word marmor derives from the Greek μάρμαρον (mármaron) which means “shining stone.” Thanks to its unique features, the marmo lunense started to be quarried in the first century BC as substitute for the more expensive—for transport reasons—marble from Greece. The marble from Carrara was used for some of the most remarkable buildings in Ancient Rome. Some of the most famous examples are the Pantheon, Trajan’s Column, and the Column of Marcus Aurelius. It is worth mentioning that Michelangelo’s David was created in Carrara marble between 1501 and 1504. Modern examples include the Peace Monument in Washington.
Another important building material in Roman times was travertine, a form of limestone deposited by mineral springs. Well-known travertine quarries exist in Tivoli and Guidonia Montecelio, close to Rome, where the most important quarries since Ancient Roman times can be found. Travertine derives its name from the former name of Tivoli, known as Tibur in Roman times. The lapis tiburtinus (tibur stone) was largely employed for building temples, aqueducts, monuments, bath complexes, and amphitheaters such as the Colosseum, the largest building in the world constructed mostly of travertine.
During the Etruscan and early Republican periods, tuff (from the Italian tufo), a type of rock made of volcanic ashes ejected during volcanic eruptions, was the most popular building material in Latium Vetus and Etruria. The Etruscans made large use of tuff for funerary architecture. Characteristic Etruscan tombs have large rock-cut chambers, often under a tumulus in large cemeteries. These, together with some city walls, are among the few Etruscan constructions to survive. Another fascinating rock construction is the network of excavated pathways called the Vie Cave in Sorano, Pitigliano, and Sovana. Carved into the tuff hills, they create an impressive road network linking an Etruscan necropolis and several settlements. These paths consist mainly of trenches excavated as nearly vertical cliffs in tuff, sometimes over twenty meters high, possibly serving as an effective defense system against invaders. The Vie Cave were later used by Romans who connected them to the Via Clodia, connecting Saturnia to Rome.
Figure 1.3. The facade of the Colosseum built using travertine blocks. Paul Zangaro–Opera propria, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2573391
One of the most ancient examples of Roman architecture utilizing tuff is the Servian Wall, ten meters in height and eleven kilometers long, which was constructed as a defense around the city of Rome in the early fourth century BC. Pozzolana, another naturally occurring material of volcanic origin, was largely utilized in Roman architecture. The most famous pozzolana quarries are found in Pozzuoli (Naples), hence the name pozzolana. Roman concrete, also called opus caementicium, was used in construction during the late Roman Republic until the fading of the Roman Empire. Roman concrete is durable due to its incorporation of volcanic ash, which prevents cracks from spreading. This technical innovation developed rapidly, and by the middle of the first century, the principles of underwater construction in concrete were well known to Roman builders. Further innovative developments in engineering contributed to the construction of structurally complicated forms, such as the Pantheon dome.