This book focuses on urbanization and state formation in middle Tyrrhenian Italy during the first millennium BC by analyzing settlement organization and territorial patterns in Rome and Latium vetus from the Bronze Age to the Archaic Era. In contrast with the traditional diffusionist view, which holds that the idea of the city was introduced to the West via Greek and Phoenician colonists from the more developed Near East, this book demonstrates important local developments towards higher complexity, dating to at least the beginning of the Early Iron Age, if not earlier. By adopting a multidisciplinary and multitheoretical framework, this book overcomes the old debate between exogenous and endogenous by suggesting a network approach that sees Mediterranean urbanization as the product of reciprocal catalyzing actions.
- Methodology uses landscape approach and settlement analysis, and theoretical synthesis includes urbanization models
- Looks at new archaeological evidence and a review of recent excavations in Rome
- Provides historical and archaeological synthesis, with deep historical perspective from the Bronze Age to the Archaic Era