Abstract
The period between the beginning of the Early Iron Age and the end of the Archaic Period is a time of changes and developments in the Italian Peninsula, which led to the creation of regional ethnic and political groups and to the formation of the first city-states in Western Europe. In the present study, we focus on the evolution of terrestrial route network in the Tyrrhenian region of Latium vetus as it has been hypothesised by scholars from the archaeological evidence. Our main goal is to investigate the mechanisms linking decision making processes and the structure of transportation networks. We first attempted to replicate some of its features applying three models previously elaborated for the neighboring region of Southern Etruria. Since it was not possible to attain entirely satisfactory results, we modified the model that performed better in the Etruscan region by including a tunable amount of rich-get-richer bias which improved considerably its performance. Our results suggest that coordinated decision making with a slightly unbalanced power was responsible for the peculiar characteristics of the route network topology of Latium vetus. Moreover, the mechanism implemented by this model implies that places located at favourable positions can build on their initial advantage and get more and more powerful. This fits very well with the picture elaborated by different scholars on the nature of power balance and dynamics in this region.
Highlights
The period between the beginning of the Early Iron Age (950/925 BC) and the end of the Archaic Age (509 BC ca) is a time of changes and developments in the Italian Peninsula, which led to the creation of regional ethnic and political groups and to the formation of the first city-states in Western Europe (the bibliography here is vast: on regional ethnic and political groups for a traditional approach, see Pallottino (1991) and for a network approach Blake (2014); on urbanization in Italy, see, e.g., Guidi (1998, 2006); Peroni (2000); Pacciarelli (2001); Bonghi Jovino (2005); Nijboer (2005); Fulminante (2014); Rendeli (2015))
We focus on the terrestrial route network in the Tyrrhenian region of Latium vetus (Figure 1)
Our results suggest that coordinated decision making with a slightly unbalanced power was responsible for the peculiar characteristics of the route network topology of the Latin region
Summary
The period between the beginning of the Early Iron Age (950/925 BC) and the end of the Archaic Age (509 BC ca) is a time of changes and developments in the Italian Peninsula, which led to the creation of regional ethnic and political groups and to the formation of the first city-states in Western Europe (the bibliography here is vast: on regional ethnic and political groups for a traditional approach, see Pallottino (1991) and for a network approach Blake (2014); on urbanization in Italy, see, e.g., Guidi (1998, 2006); Peroni (2000); Pacciarelli (2001); Bonghi Jovino (2005); Nijboer (2005); Fulminante (2014); Rendeli (2015)). Terrestrial routes can be considered as the result of the interplay of multiple factors: they are essential for permitting inter-settlement cooperative processes (information exchange, trade, defense), How Latin Shaped Transportation Networks. Any transportation infrastructure can be regarded as the emerging outcome of social interactions and interactions between societies and environments The importance of such systems is self-evident: they influence the development of past societies enhancing trade dynamics and affecting the prosperity of a civilization and its complexification (e.g., emergence of urbanism). Summarizing, terrestrial routes both shape and are shaped by the societies who create them and the environment in which they exist in a very clear example of feedback loop. By comparing the outcomes of all the four options to the empirical system, we identify some of the contributory factors that could have led Rome to prevail over other Latin cities
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