Terrestrial communication networks and political agency in Early Iron Age Central Italy (950–500 BCE)

Bibliographic Data

ID20072401
AuthorsFrancesca Fulminante (0000-0001-8592-8876, corresponding author)
Year2020
Pages196-213
Publication date2020-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueArchaeological Networks and Social Interaction (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781351003063-9
OpenAlexW3014257721
ISBN9781351003063
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited1

Transportation networks can be regarded as an epiphenomenon of social interactions and interactions between societies and environments. At the same time, they influence the development of past societies and their complexification (e.g. emergence of urbanism). There is a feedback loop. To better understand emerging Latin and Etruscan urban polities and their interactions we modelled their terrestrial infrastructure networks to explore the underlying mechanism of their creation and maintenance. Data used to build the networks are settlements in Etruria and Latium Vetus between the beginning of the Early Iron Age and the end of the Archaic Period; and terrestrial routes hypothesized by scholars from later roads, topography and the position of existing settlements. The results of the modelling suggest that a balanced cooperative decision-making process was driving the creation and maintenance of the terrestrial route system in the Etruscan region; whereas in Latium Vetus a slightly unbalanced dynamics of power constitutes the most likely underlying mechanism. This fits very well with the picture elaborated by different scholars on the nature of power balance and dynamics in the two regions

Ancient history · Geography · Iron Age · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Law

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