Abstract
Recent excavations and theoretical advances have revealed evidence of an early and perhaps independent nucleation and centralization process in the region south of the Alps, a phenomenon that has been undervalued in previous studies. In this paper I present a broad overview and attempt to reassess the role of the Cisalpine regions as crossroads of trade and cultural transfer between the Mediterranean and central Europe through a critical evaluation of key archaeological evidence. I adopt alternative and up-to-date perspectives on the urbanization phenomenon, disentangling commonsensical and text-driven definitions of urbanism and social formation, while challenging the outdated “check-list” approach. This theoretical framework should promote a paradigm shift that leads to a substantial backdating and broadening of the appearance of complex site agglomerations in northern Italy, avoiding unidirectional development patterns and instead looking at possible cases of instability, ephemerality, and seasonality. The adoption of a comparative perspective triggers a timely disentanglement of the simplistic equation between urbanism and social hierarchy. Beyond a narrow and selective emphasis on elites, this paper considers alternative social entities and actions, including commoners, subaltern groups, and cooperation.
Highlights
This paper sketches the process of centralization and settlement nucleation that took place in the Po Plain of northern Italy between the Late Bronze Age and the first half of the first millennium BC
Can we speak of “urbanization” in northern Italy before the classical and Roman periods? This doubt prompts other conceptual questions: What is urbanism in archaeological terms? Is it still a useful heuristic category? How can we identify, without the support of written and epigraphical sources—as is the case for Bronze and Iron Age northern Italy—a self-perceived sense of “urban” lifestyle, if any? Are there more suitable alternatives for describing the aggregation and nucleation phenomena suggested for certain periods by the material evidence?
In writing this paper I highlighted to what extent ongoing archaeological projects and theoretical advances could undermine the primitivist perception of an underdeveloped protohistoric Europe (Collis 2016), prone to the idealistic prejudice that cultural innovations could have flourished only after contacts with supposedly “advanced” civilizations
Summary
This paper sketches the process of centralization and settlement nucleation that took place in the Po Plain of northern Italy between the Late Bronze Age and the first half of the first millennium BC. In this paper I adopt a polythetic, i.e., varying and flexible, combination of archaeological attributes and sociocultural traits that are visible in the record of Late Bronze and Early Iron Age northern Italy, looking for local, independent processes of centralized agglomeration distinguishable from different population patterns (i.e., rural and hinterland settlement).
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