Final Bronze Age and social change in Veneto

Abstract

This contribution proposes a theoretical framework for the investigation of ethnicity, group membership and socio-political change in the Italian region of Veneto between the Final Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age (approximately 12th – 9th centuries BC). By drawing on research in the humanities and social science emphasising the multi-faceted, culturally variable and blurred nature of ethnicity, this article will suggest that a review of current approaches to ethnic formation in late prehistoric and proto-historic Italy is needed. In particular, I will propose a shift in the focus of research from the grand-scale of ethnogenesis as discussed in relation to macro-entities such as the Etruscans, the Veneti and the Latins – to the more subtle practices of interaction and identity negotiation that took place among social agents at the micro-scale. In doing so, I will tackle the issue of whether specific forms of social inclusion and construction of group membership that are attested in Veneto during the 1st-millennium BC might have started to develop before the Final Bronze Age/ Iron Age transition.