Regional Pathways to Complexity: Settlement and Land-Use Dynamics in Early Italy from the Bronze Age to the Republican Period(Amsterdam Archaeological Studies)

About the Book

Synthesizing almost 30 years of Dutch archaeological research in central and southern Italy, this book discusses and compares settlement and land use patterns from the late protohistoric period to the late Roman Republic. Exploring both social and environmental explanations, as well as interregional parallellisms and divergences, the authors take a multi-scalar approach (from micro-regional to supra-regional) to the long-term development of indigenous Bronze Age tribal pastoralist societies towards the complexity of urbanized Roman society. The culmination of a joint project conducted between 1997 and 2005, the comparative perspective offered by this book is based on the results of long-term landscape archaeological fieldwork projects by the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (in Lazio and Calabria) and the Archaeological Centre of the Free University (in Puglia).Amsterdam Archaeological Studies is a series devoted to the study of past human societies from the prehistory up into modern times, primarily based on the study of archaeological remains. The series will include excavation reports of modern fieldwork; studies of categories of material culture; and synthesising studies with broader images of past societies, thereby contributing to the theoretical and methodological debates in archaeology.

Table of Contents:
preface, 1 Introduction, 2 Regional Settlement Dynamics of the Pontine Region, 3 Regional Settlement Dynamics of the Salento Isthmus, 4 Settlement Dynamics of the Sibaritide and its Hinterland, 5 Centralization and proto-urbanization in the Bronze and Iron Ages, 6 Rethinking early Greek, indigenous encounters in southern Italy, 7 Indigenous Urbanization in the Archaic Period, 8 Rural Infill, Urbanization and Roman Expansion, 9 A Supra-regional Comparative Perspective, bibliographic ref erences, Index, Colour plates

About the Author :
Peter Attema is professor of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Groningen. Gert-Jan Burgers is assistant professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at the Free University of Amsterdam. Martijn van Leusen is assistant professor of Landscape Archaeology at the University of Groningen.

Review :
-Attema, Burgers and Van Leusen take stock of decades of Dutch archaeological research in Italy in highlighting three important regions of the peninsula. Thanks to integrated methodologies and consistent data collection, excavation and field survey results from the sample areas exhibit significant parallelisms. In this way they conjure up a thought-provoking reconstruction of settlement development across a vast geographic space.� [-][-]Nicola Terrenato, professor of Classical Archaeology, department of Classical Studies, University of Michigan, USA [-][-]-Using a comparative approach, intensive field-by-field examination of past settlements, sanctuaries and burial sites have been used to paint a highly detailed picture of humanactivity from the later Bronze Age to the rise of the Roman Empire. What emerges is an unparalleled series of insights into how regional societies evolve internally and in response to external interventions such as colonialism, imperialism, and international commerce. Each region tells a different story, shedding precious light on how History is actually made on the ground.� [-][-]John Bintliff, professor of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology, Leiden University, the Netherlands [-]"Regional Pathways to Complexity still[-]counts as a success inasmuch as it proves[-]the far-reaching potential of multidisciplinary[-]comparative projects towards[-]answering 'big questions' about the ancient[-]world." European Journal of Archaeology (16,1)[-]