The Urbanisation of Rome and Latium Vetus
From the Bronze Age to the Archaic Era

An original and unprecedented analysis of urbanization and state formation in Rome and Latium vetus from the Bronze Age to the Archaic Era.

Francesca Fulminante (Author)

9781107030350, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 February 2014

428 pages, 98 b/w illus. 38 maps
26 x 18.5 x 3 cm, 1.09 kg

'Francesca Fulminante's book represents an important contribution, since it provides a new basis for the debate on changing settlement patterns in Early Iron Age and Archaic Latium. It should be read not only by archaeologists, but also by historians and other scholars interested in the origins of Rome and Mediterranean urbanisation.' Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

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 multi-theoretical 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.

1. Urbanization and state formation in Middle Tyrrhenian Italy: historical questions and theoretical models
2. The Latin landscape, data and methodology
3. The city scale: Rome from a small Bronze Age village to the great city of the Archaic Age
4. The territory scale: definition and dating of the Ager Romanus antiquus
5. The territory scale: the Roman hinterland from the Bronze Age to the Republican period
6. The regional scale: settlement pattern analysis in Latium vetus from the Bronze to the Archaic Age
7. Multidimensional and multi-theoretical approach to the urbanization and state formation in Latium vetus.

Subject Areas: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]