Craft, exchange, and subsistence strategies of the inner Apennines in Archaic times: the archaeology of Casentino and Valtiberina from 600 to 400 BC.

Thesis

In this thesis I investigated the kinds of economy at play in the countryside of central Italy in Archaic and Late Archaic times (600-400 BC), so to gain new insights on the society that developed the many forms of urbanisms that we can record in this period. The case studies for this assessment were two valleys in the inner Apennines—Casentino and Valtiberina—sited at the border between modern day Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. In the first part of the thesis, I identified the archaeological correlates of what could be a semi-monetary economy. By combining a landscape archaeology approach on the assessment of archaeological evidence, with a technical assessment of all the pottery from all the Archaic and Late Archaic sites within the two valleys, using a chaîne opératoire approach to reconstruct the techniques of production, I discovered two differential types of spread of pottery goods among the settlements of the two valleys, roughly according to their function—kitchenware had a very local spread, banqueting ware had a general spread. I then made use of a perspective on trade and exchange informed by anthropological theories of value arguing that the locals traded according to ‘spheres of exchange’, a system also known in anthropology as ‘multi-centric economy’.

In the second part of this thesis, I investigated the environmental traces of Archaic urbanisms of central Italy by producing a paleo-environmental reconstruction of land cover and land use, based on a comparative indicator taxa analysis of pollen from cores taken in ancient lakes of central Italy. The picture drafted through this reconstruction, that includes the whole of central Italy, is that of an agriculture with a rather low impact on the surrounding environment, with no clear traces of systemic land reclamation on a large scale. I then argued that such an agriculture was not geared up towards the production of surplus for supplying densely inhabited cities. I then proceeded to investigate the possible subsistence strategies of Casentino and Valtiberina, in relation to their settlement patterns, arguing that there could be traces of state structures and also of a society with intriguing heterarchical aspects. Finally, considering all these clues I argued that we should rethink the mainstream models of Archaic urbanisms, still centred on surplus making and redistribution, in favour of more grounded ones, more prominently based on interconnectivity, adaptive agricultural activities, and shared socio-cultural values.

Authors: Dominici, CM

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-aqjkmxkjd
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: landscape archaeology; classical archaeology; chaine operatoire; anthropology; central Italy; Archaic period
• Subjects: Etruscan; Community development, Urban; Classical antiquities; Paleo-environment; Archaeology; Countryside; Anthropology