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ITALY FROM PREHISTORY TO GREEK COLONIZATION

THE PALEOLITHIC: ITALY’S FIRST INHABITANTS

The oldest archaeological traces of the first inhabitants of the Italian peninsula date back to about eight hundred thousand to one million years ago. However, it is only starting from about 700,000 BP that human traces from the lower Paleolithic become more frequent. In particular, extensive excavations performed in two locations have brought to light outstanding paleosurfaces that can be related to these early stages of human history. One of them is located in Molise at Isernia La Pineta along the western border of the Isernia basin in the lower range of the Apennines; another one is located at Notarchirico, in Basilicata, within the Venosa basin. The two find spots are about 180 km apart.

The deposit at Isernia La Pineta was discovered by chance in 1978 during construction works for a road connecting Naples to Vasto.¹ The closeness to a stream, which regularly flooded, and the occurrence of volcanic events contributed to the good preservation of the site, which was covered by flood deposits alternating with volcanic materials. A considerable amount of lithic manufactures was recovered on the paleosurfaces of the archaeological deposits. These lithic assemblages consisted mainly of flint and limestone flakes and tools, which were found together with animal remains belonging to bison, bears, boars, cervids, caprids, and pachyderms such as elephants, rhinos, and hippos, as well as birds such as wild ducks and dabchicks, small rodents, turtles, and fishes. Researchers reconstructed the environmental context of Isernia La Pineta, in which large prairies were accompanied by marshlands and forests located on the mountains nearby. The area was rich in wildlife and suitable for the survival of prehistoric man.

In one of the paleosurfaces dating back to about six hundred thousand years ago, the archaeologists documented a two-meter-wide structure consisting of small limestone blocks, and several lithic manufactures and animal remains. This paleosurface is one of the most important remains of the early Paleolithic in the whole of Europe. Its discovery and subsequent study resulted in the creation of a museum that includes a large area where excavations are currently in progress.

The late 1970s were a golden moment for Paleolithic research in Italy. Indeed, only one year following the discovery of the Isernia La Pineta site, another outstanding context was unearthed at Notarchirico in 1979, a site located on the border of the Venosa basin (Potenza) in the upper part of the hill bearing the same name. A total of eleven sequential levels from the lower Paleolithic were extensively excavated and documented. Thanks to the correlations with volcanic deposits in the area, it could be established that the sequence in question covers a relatively narrow time range (about two hundred thousand years) starting from about 650,000 BP. The prairie-like environment with sparse trees was inhabited by several wildlife species, among which elephants prevailed, followed by cervids and bovids. Lithic manufactures included choppers and flake tools, as well as in some cases bifaces. Based on their features, they can be classified as belonging to an archaic Acheulian phase of southern Italy. From the so-called Alpha palaeosurface—the most recent one in the series estimated to date back to about 450,000 BP—comes a fragment of a human femur, which is the oldest human fossil remain found so far in southern Italy.

The Ciampate del Diavolo (Neapolitan dialect for “Devil’s Trails”) is a locality near the extinct Roccamonfina volcano in northern Campania. It is named after a prehistoric trackway preserved in pyroclastic flow deposits that have been dated to around 350,000 BP.² A combination of sedimentary erosion and depositional morphology resulted in a bench, contouring the depositional slope. Prior to rapid lithification of the flow, early human ancestors used the bench as a route-way. At least two individuals diverted from this route-way to make the famous Trackways A and B of the Devil’s Trails. The footprints indicate that a relatively short hominid was making its way down a steep slope on the flank of the volcano, away from the crater. The bench and associated animal tracks were covered by subsequent pyroclastic ash falls before being exhumed in historical times by a combination of natural erosion and quarrying. Local people attributed the prints to the Devil, as they regarded him as the only being capable of walking on lava without harm. These imprints were identified as human footprints after archaeologists examined them in 2002, and are the second-oldest set of human footprints known outside Africa after the Happisburgh footprints. This set of fossilized footprints has been attributed to bipedal hominids, possibly Homo heidelbergensis. Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans are all considered to have descended from the Homo heidelbergensis that appeared around 700,000 BP in Africa. The picture of the Paleolithic adaptations in the Italian Peninsula has always been coarse-grained; nonetheless, recent discoveries and researchers regarding Neanderthal extinction and the dispersal of anatomically modern humans as well as the origin and diffusion of modern technologies and symbolic behavior in Europe have enhanced our knowledge of Paleolithic in Italy.³

The presence of Neanderthals is documented in Italy already fifty thousand years ago. The most famous sites where remains of Neanderthals were discovered are Grotta Guattari (Guattari Cave), San Felice Circeo, and Grotta di Fumane (Fumane Cave). In particular, Grotta di Fumane is one of the major prehistoric archaeological sites in Europe, and is an exceptional document of the lifestyles of both Neanderthal man and early Modern humans, which were present all over Europe around forty thousand years ago.⁴

The Balzi Rossi is an ensemble of caves and shelters, which were occupied from Lower Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic. To the last period belong most of the archaeological remains now shown in the two museums of the complex.

The Upper Paleolithic roughly dates to between 30,000 and 10,000 BP and corresponds to the beginning of the Holocene, when behavioral modernity appeared. To this period date the first manifestation of art. The Venus of Savignano is a figurine made from soft greenstone and one of the largest known so-called Venuses (22 cm in height). With a proposed dating of 25,000–20,000 BP, it is considered one of the earliest expressions of art in Italy.

The Caverna delle Arene Candide is a vast cave located at the Caprazoppa promontory in Finale Ligure (Liguria) whose stratigraphy ranges from Upper Paleolithic to the Byzantine period. The cave is named after a dune of white siliceous sand of Aeolian origin, banked against the wall of the promontory, today destroyed by quarrying activity. The cave is situated at eighty-five meters above sea level and has three wide openings that point toward the sea. The Arene Candide cave was excavated in the 1940s by L. Bernabò Brea and L. Cardini. The favorable environmental conditions in the cave allowed for the conservation of organic material like bone fossils and charcoal fragments. The Pleistocene deposits yielded a number of well-preserved burials. The earliest of these is called “the Prince”: a fifteen-year-old juvenile male dated to about 23,500 years BP. The skeleton was found at a depth 6.70 meters in a bed of red ochre, its head surrounded by hundreds of perforated shells and canines of deer, probably originally forming a kind of cap. Shells, pendants of mammoth ivory, four perforated “bâtons de commandement” (command sticks) of elk antler, three of which were decorated with thin radial striations around the hole, and a 23-centimeter-long flint blade held in the right hand were additional components of the extraordinary ornamentation of this specimen. This is the richest Gravettian burial discovered so far in Europe. Much later the cave was used again as burial ground for eighteen individuals, who were deposed in richly ornamented graves. The most recent of these inhumations date to between 10,700 and 9,900 BP.⁵

Figure 2.1. The so called “Little Prince” burial excavated at the Arene Candide Cave (Finale Ligure) and now displayed at the Archaeological Museum in Genova. Di ho visto nina volare from Italy–Genova 2008, CC BY- SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12682943

The Mesolithic began with the Holocene warm period around 11,660 BP and ended with the introduction of farming in the sixth millennium BC.⁶ As the so-called Neolithic package—that is, a set of new economic and technological elements, such as timber longhouses, polished stone axes, pottery, domesticated cereals, domestic animals (especially sheep/goats), and new traditions of settlement—spread into Europe, the Mesolithic way of life based on hunting and gathering was marginalized and eventually disappeared. Some important characteristics of the Mesolithic communities, such as sedentism, population size, and use of plant foods are considered evidence of the transition to agriculture. The spread of Neolithic was not a homogeneous phenomenon, and it took far more than three thousand years until the foraging lifestyle was replaced by food production in the whole of Europe. In northeastern Europe, for example, the hunting and fishing lifestyle continued into the Medieval period in regions less suited to agriculture.

Figure 2.2. Venus of Savignano, front view. No machine-readable author provided. 120 assumed (based on copyright claims). [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]

NEOLITHIC: ITALY’S FIRST FARMERS

Like other areas of the Central and Western Mediterranean, during the sixth millennium BC the first farmers progressively settled the Italian Peninsula and the surrounding islands. The replacement or acculturation of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence systems by food-producing communities extended over two millennia, from before 6000 BC in the south to perhaps 4000 BC in the remote mountain areas of northern Italy. Various theories have been proposed to explain the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic. Radiocarbon dating from domesticated plants and animals found in the earliest Neolithic contexts were used to demonstrate the steady northward and westward movement of these commodities in settled farming sites. The most accepted model for Neolithization assumes that domesticated plants and animals were introduced into the Mediterranean and western Europe by early farmers of the Levant and western Asia origin, expanding into new and relatively uninhabited zones. It is generally accepted that the physical introduction of the “Neolithic package” happened gradually. Chronologically and culturally, the Neolithization of Italy is strongly related to the southern Balkans. Absolute dating links the early settlement on both sides of the Adriatic, suggesting a very rapid and almost simultaneous colonization of both coastal Italy and Dalmatia taking place between the mid-sixth and mid-fifth millennia BC.⁷

The earliest evidence for cereal farming comes from the Tavoliere, a large plateau in Apulia. Riverine and lacustrine locations were crucial in the transition to settled, permanent occupation. Many of the earliest Neolithic sites took advantage of locations where traditional foraging practices could be used alongside some of the new farming methods. The full adoption of Neolithic traits, and especially pottery, took place over some two millennia throughout the Italian Peninsula.

Traditionally, the Neolithic cultures of Italy have been defined through ceramic styles. This research tradition is rooted in the German culture-history approach, which greatly influenced Italian prehistoric archaeology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ceramics are divided into forms and types, and many styles considered specific to time and space. The Italian Neolithic is divided into three main periods, primarily on the basis of different ceramic styles: Early Neolithic, Middle Neolithic, and Late Neolithic.

In Italy, Early Neolithic ceramics styles form a variety of heterogeneous regionally characterized traditions, while the ceramics of the Middle and Late Neolithic communities represent an increasingly homogenous cultural mosaic characterized by painted and decorated fine wares. The distribution zones of these pottery styles were used by archaeologists to trace the borders of archaeological cultures. In Central Italy, the presence of the Apennines caused the formation of different regional horizons on the Tyrrhenian side and on the Adriatic side, with different cultural groups succeeding each other with some overlaps. One of the most widespread ceramic groups in the Early Neolithic is the so-called cardial impressed style, which characterized the Tyrrhenian coast from Liguria down to Sicily and connects Italy to the Balkans, central Europe, and France.

During the Middle Neolithic the center and the south are dominated by the Serra d’Alto ceramic style, which is subdivided into three regional groups that take their names from the areas in which they were first recognized: Lipari, which spread in Sicily; Capri, which was diffused on the Tyrrhenian part of the peninsula, and Scaloria, characterizing instead the Ionian and Adriatic regions. The center-north of the peninsula was characterized by the adoption of Ripoli and brown-painted ceramic styles, while in the Alpine and Po River regions the Vasi a Bocca Quadrata (Square Mouthed Vases culture) style spread. It is especially in the late and final Neolithic that greater uniformity in style, technology, burial customs, and exchange systems can be observed throughout the peninsula. The late Neolithic is characterized by two main large ceramic groups: the Diana-Bellavista in the south and the center, and Lagozza, in the north of Italy.

The earliest Neolithic settlements of southeast Italy are documented in caves along the Apulian coast. Settlement expanded throughout the whole peninsula, and substantial ditched enclosures typify open sites such as the ones on the Tavoliere plain. Many ditched enclosure sites were found to contain numerous C-shaped ditched compounds, which appear to have formed the boundaries of individual domestic units of huts and storage facilities. Very few have been investigated, but among them is the site of Passo di Corvo, which revealed a roughly rectangular structure of stone footings and postholes. The compounds were cobbled around the houses, suggesting specialized working areas. Estimates of population levels on the Tavoliere during the Neolithic suggest communities composed of 70 to 350 persons. However, it has to be underlined that these estimates have been made on the basis of Passo di Corvo, which is an exceptional and atypically large settlement in an area where only 2 percent of the sites can be classified as very large. Serra d’Alto, close to Matera, is another ditched settlement, particularly famous for its ceramic style. Serra d’Alto pottery is indeed characterized by very fine yellow paste, decorated with exquisite curvilinear and geometric patterns in brown and with finely modeled handles and lugs in animal and bow shapes. Settlement types varied greatly from the south to the north of the peninsula. The recently opened archaeological park of the Neolithic Village of Sant’Andrea in Val Trebbia features an outdoor replica of the prehistoric village excavated in the same locality, conveying the idea of how a Neolithic village in the mountainous area close to the Po plain looked. The prehistoric site extended over at least one hectare, a unique finding in the context of northern Italian prehistory.

The emergence of Neolithic culture in Sardinia has the aspect of a sharp rupture that led to the first permanent occupation of the islands through a process of diffuse and rapid territorialization. To date, any evidence of contiguity between the first Neolithic implantations and the last Mesolithic frequentations on the island is still lacking. The scouting phase of Neolithic colonization of Sardinia is scarcely documented. Around the middle of the sixth millennium BC, cardial impressed ware spread along the coastal belt of the central and north Tyrrhenian shore.

COPPER AGE: TOWARD SOCIAL COMPLEXITY

The Eneolithic is known in Italy also as the Copper Age (Età del Rame), and occupies the last part of the fourth and the whole third millennium BC. In this period, the first metal objects appear in Italy, and changes in social complexity of prehistoric communities can be observed. Changes toward stratified societies were considered as consequences of the so-called secondary products revolution. According to Andrew Sherratt, who proposed this model in 1981, in this period animals were exploited not only as a meat source but also for renewable secondary products such as milk and wool, as well as to be used for dragging plows in agriculture, riding, and pack transport.⁸ The secondary products revolution incorporates the discovery and diffusion of secondary products innovations and their systematic application, leading to a transformation of economy and society. While it is undeniable that during this period a great transformation occurred in the social texture of Eneolithic communities, further research has demonstrated that changes that might be linked to the secondary products revolution emerged in different periods, ranging from the second half of the seventh millennium BC in Central Anatolia to the first half of the fourth millennium BC in Europe. Milk, for example, was processed into dairy products already in the sixth millennium BC. This means that the development of societies and their complexities was not a linear process and that different factors came into play.

During the Eneolithic, outstanding changes can be observed in Italy, especially as regards the introduction of new ideologies and beliefs. Valcamonica, one of the largest valleys of the central Alps, situated in the Lombardy plain,⁹ was the first Italian site to be included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1979 because it has one of the world’s greatest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs. More than one hundred forty thousand symbols and figures were carved in rock over a period of eight thousand years, depicting themes connected with agriculture, navigation, war, and magic. Hundreds of these are anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures as well as weapons, ornaments, suns, and more or less abstract symbols. They were engraved on the rock and on statue-stelae during the third millennium BC. The analysis of the iconography and comparison of the engravings with weapons and jewels found in the course of archaeological excavations show the changes in the ideology of the Eneolithic societies. The increasing importance of hegemonic characters—perhaps descendants from a divinity—strongly taking the form of a masculine figure, recognizable through weaponry and clothing, suggests deep social changes under the sign of hierarchical organization and power. Further insights into the emerging of social complexity and warrior ideology can be seen at Remedello, a cemetery in the Brescia area. The cemetery was excavated in the nineteenth century following extensive damages by agricultural works. Fourteen of the nearly one hundred graves that composed the cemetery were excavated and preserved, in addition to the graphic documentation and grave goods of a further twenty-one. Remedello graves are oval pits in which the deceased were buried in crouched position leaning on the left flank, alone or in some cases coupled. Grave goods comprise flint and copper daggers, flint arrowheads, copper axes, silver pinheads, and ceramics. The triangular copper dagger is widely reproduced on the anthropomorphic stelae of Sion and Aosta and on the Valcamonica petroglyphs.

In central Italy the Rinaldone culture spread in Tuscany and northern Lazio. It takes its name from the town of Rinaldone in the province of Viterbo. As with Remedello and most of the other Eneolithic cultures, it is known only for its funerary habits, since settlements are almost unknown. It can be argued that new subsistence strategies implying higher mobility were preferred during the third millennium BC in respect to the classic Neolithic village focusing on agriculture. The settlements would have been occupied temporarily and thus would have left faint traces difficult to detect. Contrary to Remedello, which was characterized by individual or double graves, the Rinaldone culture was characterized by the use of collective rock-chamber graves and bone manipulation as a post-depositional practice. Typical Rinaldone grave goods are flask-shaped jars; decorative elements such as antimony necklaces, bone beads, and steatite pendants; and a considerable number of weapons including mallet heads, arrowheads, spears, and daggers. In the Ponte San Pietro cemetery, situated close to Viterbo, the so-called Tomba della vedova (widow’s grave) was discovered, an outstanding burial containing a male of high rank with rich accompanying goods buried together with a young woman who had her skull smashed. This peculiarity suggested to the archaeologists that the woman was ritually killed following her husband’s death. The widow’s grave is displayed at the Pigorini Museum in Rome.

Figure 2.3. Reconstruction of a Gaudo culture grave in the Archaeological Museum of Paestum. Di Xocolatl (talk) 08:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC)–Fotografia autoprodotta, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32418736

The Gaudo culture spread primarily in the region of Campania at the beginning of the third millennium BC. The type site Gaudo cemetery is located near Paestum, not far from the mouth of the River Sele.¹⁰ It occupies about two thousand square meters and contains thirty-four separate tombs. Each tomb is roughly hewn out of rock with either one or two burial chambers each containing multiple human skeletons in the fetal position. The tombs were accessed by a more or less circular shaft from above, at the bottom of which was a kind of vestibule. Following the burial rites, a large stone would have sealed off the tomb. The corpses would be accompanied by pottery in various forms, such as the typical askoid vessels as well as weapons: arrowheads, spearheads, and knives of flint or copper.

Another important Eneolithic culture of the peninsula is the Laterza culture, which spread in Apulia and Basilicata. Like Rinaldone, it is known for its collective rock-chamber graves, the most outstanding being Laterza grave n.3, in which about one hundred individuals were buried. Pottery recovered in the grave suggests the existence of trans-Adriatic contacts connecting Apulia to central Dalmatia.

The Italian Peninsula was also involved in the Bell Beaker phenomenon, a long-range connectivity pattern that spread over western and central Europe during a good part of the third millennium BC. The Bell Beaker phenomenon is understood as a complete and complex cultural phenomenon involving use of a particular pottery type, metalwork in copper and gold, archery, specific types of ornamentation, and shared ideological, cultural, and religious ideas. This recurrent assemblage is known as the “Beaker package.” The central element of Bell Beaker ideology was a set of objects related to the drinking of special beverages and to archery for both war and hunting. In Italy the Bell Beaker phenomenon marks the transition between the Eneolithic and the Early Bronze Age. In continental Italy, the regions in which the Bell Beaker phenomenon is more attested are the Po plain, in particular the Garda Lake area, and Tuscany. However, the Bell Beaker ideology played a relevant role in Sicily and Sardinia as well.

In Sardinia, the Domus de Janas (Sardinian for house of the fairies) are a type of chamber tomb resembling domestic architecture and consisting of several chambers quarried out of the bedrock, built mostly between 3400 and 2700 BC, and in some cases used until the Early Bronze Age. The cemetery of Anghelu Ruju, near Alghero, is the largest Eneolithic cemetery known on the island. It consists of thirty-eight tombs. Within the many chambers composing the cemetery there are numerous grave goods such as vases, “mother goddess” figurines, weapons, necklace beads, and so on. Finds of flint tools, mace-heads, arrowheads, axes, and beads suggest a culture that emphasized hunting and warrior ideology. Silver and copper objects of possible foreign provenance indicate that Sardinia was involved in long-distance exchange. In turn, valuable obsidian from Monte Arci, a long-dormant volcano on the island, was found in several sites across the central Mediterranean. Among the most striking features of the Anghelu Ruju cemetery are the numerous carvings of long-horned bulls’ heads. The site was later reused by communities involved in the Bell Beaker phenomenon as testified by the presence of the characteristic “Beaker package”: decorated beakers, wrist-guards, arrowheads, and buttons with V-shaped perforations.

ITALY DURING THE BRONZE AGE

The Bronze Age in Italy starts conventionally around 2300–2200 BC and ends in 950 BC. It is divided into four main chronological blocks (Ancient, Middle, Recent, and Final Bronze Age). Scholars see the full introduction of bronze metallurgy that occurred starting from the Early Bronze Age as a driving force for profound social, economic, and cultural changes. In this epoch hierarchical and ranked societies emerged throughout Europe and in Italy, especially from the Middle Bronze Age onward. In the transition from Early to Middle Bronze Age a new gendered perception of personhood and individual is introduced. These new social roles and identities are materialized in different forms of ornaments and weapons for both men and women. In Italy starting from the Final Bronze Age one can even recognize regional differentiation of communities that will lead to the formation during the Iron Age of ethnic identities. These changes, which are observable in the whole of Europe, are particularly evident in Italy, which in this period is at the crossroads between northern European and Greek influences.

During the Early Bronze Age, the Polada culture extended from eastern Lombardy and Veneto to Emilia and Romagna, and formed one of the most important cultural complexes of the first half of the second millennium BC in northern Italy. The settlements were usually made up of stilt houses. Together with agricultural and pastoral activities, hunting, and fishing, the metallurgy of copper and bronze characterized the economy of these communities. In the Middle Bronze Age, this region was characterized by the presence of new types of sites, the pile dwellings and the dammed settlements, which spread all over the Alpine region.

During the Middle Bronze Age in the area of what is now the Pianura Padana (Po Plain) emerged the Terramare culture. The name Terramare stems from terra marna (marl-earth), a black lacustrine deposit. The typical Terramare settlement is roughly trapezoidal, with streets arranged in a quadrangular pattern. Some houses are built upon piles, even though the village is entirely on dry land, and some are not. An earthwork strengthened on the inside by buttresses, and encircled by a wide moat supplied with running water, protects the site. The average surface of a Terramare village is two hectares. The population density is estimated to be one individual per twenty-five square kilometers. That means that an average population of about 130 people was living in the wooden houses forming the village. The Terramare culture rises in a key area for trades of Baltic amber and tin from the Erzgebirge through the Valcamonica and the Po River, toward the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Greece. Around the twelfth century BC the Terramare system collapsed, the settlements were abandoned, and the population moved southward, where they probably mingled with the Apennine communities. A. M. Bietti Sestieri argues that the influence of this population moving south may have formed the basis of the Tyrrhenian Villanova culture, ultimately leading to the historic Etruscans.

Starting from the Middle Bronze Age, eastern Italy is characterized by the presence of several hillforts called castellieri, which evolved first in Istria (present-day northwestern Croatia) and expanded later into Friuli, the modern Venezia Giulia, Dalmatia, and the neighboring areas. The castellieri are fortified settlements, usually located on karstic hills in a dominant position. They were defended by one or more concentric series of walls, of rounded or elliptical shape within which was the inhabited area. About one hundred castellieri have been discovered in eastern Italy, such as that of Elleri, near Muggia, Monte Giove near Prosecco (Trieste), and San Polo, not far from Monfalcone. Several of these sites can be encountered by walking on trails in the region of Trieste.

The Proto-Apennine–Apennine–Sub-Apennine cultural complex extends in central and southern Italy starting from the Middle Bronze Age until the Recent Bronze Age.

Apennine culture communities based a great part of their economy on cattle and related transhumance activities centered in mountainous central Italy. Archaeological evidence shows that herdsmen were traveling between summer pastures where they built temporary camps and lived in caves and rock shelters. Apennine culture sites include the Capitoline Hill in Rome, as shown by the presence of their pottery in the earliest layers of occupation. Apennine settlements are both small hamlets located in defensible places and outstanding fortified sites such as Coppa Nevigata and Roca Vecchia, both in Apulia. The site of Roca is a long-lived coastal settlement protected by a large fortification wall, which was repeatedly destroyed, rebuilt, and restored over the centuries between the Middle and final Bronze Ages. The Middle Bronze Age fortifications had a monumental main entrance and at least five postern gates. The defensive wall was destroyed by a great fire—probably subsequent to a siege—which caused the collapse of the stonework structures, and burned down the settlement almost completely. The excavation of the rubble filling from the posterns’ long corridors and the Monumental Gate showed that the original contents of these spaces were sealed, as they were shortly before the destruction. The most extraordinary discovery came from postern C: seven complete human skeletons—two adults, a juvenile, and four children—were found together with a group of vessels at the western end of the corridor. Apparently, during the siege these people had taken refuge within the corridor and finally tried to hide behind a heap of vessels. Unfortunately, they all died from asphyxia caused by the fire set to the fortification wall.¹¹

The interactions between Italy and Greece had started already in the late fourteenth century BC and interested mainly southern Italy. During the Middle and Late Bronze Age, new bronze types such as the Naue II swords, spearheads with cast sockets, different implements, and dress accessories belonging to the European metallurgical koiné spread to the Mediterranean world. Archaeometallurgical analyses of artifacts found in different Aegean and Italian regions show that a number of bronzes from late Mycenaean contexts can be identified as imports from Italy. Mycenaean pottery was also imported in Italy, and local and foreign potters started to produce imitations of the Greek vessels, including fine wares and large jars. Interestingly, Italian coarse ware known as impasto was recovered from a number of western Peloponnese sites.

During the Bronze Age, Sardinia has also played a very important role due to its geographical position and its considerable metal resources. Sardinia is the most distant of the Mediterranean islands, and with its long stretches of coastline that point toward both the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas, it represents a sort of natural stepping-stone to what was considered the far west in the ancient world. The presence on the island of various artifacts from the eastern Mediterranean indicates the contact of Sardinia with Minoan, Mycenaean, and Cypriot cultures. Finds of imported metal tools such as oxhide ingots and pottery, both imported and locally copied Aegean and Cypriot, attest to trade with the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age. According to archaeological evidence, the Sardinian Bronze Age included the control of resources, systems of internal communication, landing places, and sea routes.

The Nuragic civilization flourished in Sardinia starting from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age. Characteristic monuments are the nuraghe, a type of single- or multiple-tower fortress construction built in numerous exemplars throughout the island as defensible homesites. The largest nuraghi could reach a height of about twenty-five to thirty meters and could be made up of five main towers, protected by multiple layers of walls, with dozens of additional towers. Among the most outstanding nuraghi there are the Su Nuraxi at Barumini, Santu Antine at Torralba, and Nuraghe Losa at Abbasanta. The complex at Barumini is the finest and most complete example of this remarkable form of prehistoric architecture, and together with other nuraghi it was inscribed in the World Heritage List in 1997. Sardinian communities are believed to be involved in the vast migration of the so-called Sea Peoples of the late Bronze Age, described in ancient Egyptian sources, that destroyed Mycenaean civilization and attacked Egypt at the end of the Bronze Age.¹²

Figure 2.4. Nuraghe Santu Antine, Torralba (SS). Di Gianni Careddu–Opera propria, CC BY- SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57169718

Starting from the Late Bronze Age, the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns, which were then buried in fields, spread all over Europe. The Urnfield culture first appeared in east-central Europe and northern Italy in the first half of the twelfth century BC. In Italy the Urnfield culture is known as Proto-Villanovan culture, from the name of the site in which Late Bronze Age (Proto-Villanovan) and Iron Age (Villanovan culture) cemeteries were identified first. The funeral ritual of incineration involved placing the ashes of the deceased mainly into biconical urns decorated with characteristic geometric patterns. The urn was closed using bowls with in-curving rims turned upside down or with special lids in the shape of a crested helmet. Grave goods consisting of different types of objects were deposed along with the ashes. Urnfield settlements are usually of small dimensions (one to two hectares) and often located on the top of hills and protected by stone fortifications. Proto-Villanovan sites are present all over the peninsula, mostly in the northern-central part. Among the most important are Frattesina (Veneto), Tolfa mountains (Lazio), Pianello di Genga (Marche), Ortucchio (Abruzzo), Timmari (Basilicata), Canosa (Puglia), Tropea (Calabria), and Milazzo (Sicily). Following a period of considerable uniformity from north to south, the Proto-Villanovan and then Villanovan culture shows a process of regionalization that culminates in the Iron Age. Warlike behavior among the culture’s members appears to have been intense.

Figure 2.5. Villanovan tomb from Badia, Volterra. Di I, Sailko, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5307640

IRON AGE TO ARCHAIC AGE: THE RISE OF THE ETRUSCAN CIVILIZATION

Figure 2.6. Etruscan house from Veii (RM). Di Livioandronico 2013–Opera propria, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32525835

In the Iron Age, traces of broad, territorially delimited groupings are already evident in the archaeological record. Diverse material-culture industries and burial practices point to a heterogeneous population of the Italian Peninsula. In this period urban centers appear for the first time in Europe. During the ninth century BC, indeed, a totally new kind of settlement system and sociopolitical organization emerged. Known in archaeology as the formation of proto-urban centers, at first, this development involved the sudden abandonment of many Late Bronze Age settlements of relatively small size, about five to ten hectares, located on the top of hills or naturally defended positions, and the subsequent transfer during the Iron Age of their inhabitants to a handful of overwhelmingly larger plateaus of more than 100 hectares, characterized by close proximity or direct access to essential resources and communication routes.

This process was accompanied by dramatic changes in territorial organization, accompanied by a general depopulation of large areas and a concentration of people on very restricted stretches of agricultural land and may have introduced new economic and institutional relationships between residential communities and surrounding areas. These proto-urban processes, involving the transformation of the overall sociopolitical and economic picture of Middle Tyrrhenian Italy, had a subsequent “domino effect” on the peninsula and Europe at large. During the following Orientalizing Period, the urbanization process was completed and the city was born. The proto-urban centers became the Etruscan cities of Veii, Tarquinia, Cerveteri, and Vulci.¹³

The ideological dimension of this process was remarkable, as can be observed in burials from Central Italy, such as the so-called warrior graves from Veii and Tarquinia. South Etruria became in the Early Iron Age one of the leading European areas in the craft of sheet bronze armors, which are objects strictly related to prestige and power symbolism. This specialized craft developed quite quickly to satisfy the demand of new elites, causing also the emergence of a network that might have conveyed to Italy new skills and formal models from central Europe. In culture-history terms, the Villanovan cultural complexes were followed without a severe break by the Etruscan civilization.

Together with Etruria, also in the Latium Vetus (the area south of the River Tiber) important changes occurred. An understanding of the development of settlement in the Tiber valley, the border between Latium Vetus and Etruria, is central to any understanding of Rome, its place in the ancient world, and the development of European civilization. The expansion of Rome toward the north took place during the first millennium BC in competition with Sabines, Faliscans, and Etruscans.

On the east bank of the Tiber, some major trends in settlement dynamics are also clearly observable. In fact, the emergence of the elites and the first appearance of the early states bring about a new territorial configuration. In the case of Rome, an enlargement of the settlement was detectable in the Recent Bronze Age for the first time. This is a trend that can be followed to well beyond the Iron Age not only in Rome but also in other Iron Age settlements of the Latium Vetus.¹⁴

“Etruscan” is the modern name given to the civilization of ancient Italy that prospered in the ninth century BC in the area corresponding roughly to present-day Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio. This region was usually referred to in Greek and Latin sources as “Tyrrhenia.” The culture of the Etruscan people was not only extremely advanced but also distinctively different from the cultures of the surrounding populations of Italy. Because of this, the origin of the Etruscan people has been a source of controversy for the past twenty-five hundred years, with two major theories being disputed. The first is that the Etruscans were an autochthonous population of Italy; the alternative hypothesis is that they were direct descendants of an immigrant group of Aegean and Anatolian ancestry.¹⁵

Etruria was dominant in Italy after 650 BC, when Etruscans began to expand toward both the north and the south of the Peninsula. They can be defined the first “superpower” of the western Mediterranean who, alongside the Greeks, developed the earliest true cities in Europe. In fact, most important cities in modern Tuscany (Florence, Pisa, and Siena to name a few) were first established by the Etruscans and have been continuously inhabited since then. Etruscan kings conquered and ruled Rome for one hundred years, until 509 BC when the last Etruscan king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was removed from power and the Roman Republic was established. From that moment, the expansion of the Etruscans ended. This period was followed by a slow process of conquest and assimilation by the Romans, which culminated at the time of the so-called Social War in the first century BC with the attribution of Roman citizenship to all Etruscans. Rapidly, the Etruscan culture and language disappeared and was replaced by Latin, possibly also because Etrurian lands were often distributed to Roman veterans and were partially repopulated by poor Roman citizens.

One of the most famous Etruscan archaeological sites is the Banditaccia cemetery at Cerveteri, the largest ancient cemetery in the Mediterranean area, which has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site together with the one in Tarquinia. These two large Etruscan cemeteries reflect different types of burial practices used by the Etruscans, and used from the ninth to the first century BC.¹⁶

From the cemeteries come also a large number of inscriptions that are giving us crucial information about Etruscan language and religion. Any boundaries we set between religious and nonreligious areas of Etruscan civilization are artificial at any time, but this is particularly true in the earlier period. Indeed, writing in Orientalizing and Archaic periods had a sacral and aristocratic character. Etruscan inscription can be divided into four groups: ritual, legal, funerary, and votive. The large majority is short and consists of dedications only a few words long. The longer Etruscan inscription is the Zagreb Mummy Wrappings. It is a religious text of Hellenistic period written on a linen book that was subsequently used as wrapping on an Egyptian mummy. It contains a liturgical calendar of sacrifices, offerings, and prayers to be made on specific dates.¹⁷

MAGNA GRAECIA AND SICILY

Magna Graecia was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of southern Italy in the present-day regions of Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily that were extensively populated by Greek settlers. Although contacts between southern Italy and Greece are well attested to have occurred already in the end of the third and throughout the second millennium BC, it is only in the eighth century BC that settlers from Greece built proper colonies. Greek colonization in the Mediterranean was an intricate and varied process. The speed of colonial foundations and their blended Hellenic architecture and material culture suggest the settlement of persons from multiple areas of Greece and possibly also of non-Greek origin. Greek colonization was indeed not a monolithic enterprise, and there have been a variety of simultaneous sorts of relationships between Greek settlers and indigenous groups. This happened in the coastal areas of Sicily and southern Italy as well as elsewhere in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea area.

The impact between Greeks and native Italic populations is one of the fields where archaeology has seen the greatest progress in the second half of the twentieth century. There was a remarkable assimilation of indigenous elements by the incoming Greek communities.¹⁸ This explains the equally remarkable population explosions in the first two or three generations as suggested by the settlements analysis. The cultural transformation of the native peoples through various forms of Hellenization is crucial in the history of Magna Graecia from the fifth to the third centuries BC. The degree of organization in the process of settlement foundation, as well as the intensity and nature of interactions with local cultural groups, remains hotly debated. In any discussion touching on the subject of the meeting of cultures in colonial situations, the inevitable question will arise as to whether this involved conflict or was harmonious in nature, and whether it was a meeting on equal footing or one characterized by the dominance of one culture over the other.¹⁹

Among the push and pull factors that led the Greeks to migrate from their homelands there are also demographic crises. Famine and overcrowding, together with political crisis, would have triggered the search for new commercial outlets and ports and the expulsion of consistent groups of people from their homeland after wars. The choice of Magna Graecia as a suitable site for colonies was due to the fertility of the land and its advantageous geographical position for trade at the meeting point of the Greek, Etruscan, and Phoenician worlds.

Founded by settlers from Euboea in 740 BC, Cumae is the earliest ancient Greek colony on the Italian mainland. The Greeks were already established at nearby island of Pithecusae (today Ischia), and were led to Cumae by the joint oecists Megasthenes of Chalcis and Hippocles of Cyme. Oecists were individuals chosen by an ancient Greek polis as the leader of any new colonization effort. The colony introduced in Italy the Euboean alphabet, a variant of which was adapted and modified by the Etruscans and then by the Romans and became the Latin alphabet still used worldwide today. The most important Greek colonies include Sybaris, Crotone, Tarentum, Elea, Thurii, and Heraclea. Founded by Achaeans in 720 BC, Sybaris was itself the founder of Poseidonia (Paestum). The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three majestic ancient Greek temples in the Doric order built between 600 and 450 BC, which are among the better-preserved ancient Greek temples of the whole Mediterranean.²⁰ The city walls and amphitheater of Paestum are also largely intact, as well as many other structures.

The Greeks created in Italy an autonomous political community that eventually surpassed the cities of Greece in wealth, military power, and architectural and cultural splendor.²¹ The first Greek city to be absorbed into the Roman Republic was Neapolis in 327 BC. The other Greek cities were conquered during the Samnite Wars and the Pyrrhic War, and Taras was the last to fall in 272 BC. Sicily was conquered by Rome during the First Punic War.