Landownership around the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth centuries BC represents one of the most problematic aspects of the history of archaic Rome, chiefly because of its numerous and complex social implications. It is a subject which has also given rise to historiographic controversies, above all during the nineteenth century, when it received the attention of distinguished historians, jurists and sociologists because of the important ideological and political considerations in their debate on the origins of private property. It is appropriate to recall some of the key issues of that debate here.

2. Communities at the Margins: The Origins of Amorite Identity, 2500–2200 BC

The earliest evidence for Amorites in textual sources is discussed in the context of locating them among agropastoral communities across a marginal zone ranging from the Levant to northern Mesopotamia. The onset of arid conditions with the beginning of the Meghalayan Period (i.e., the 4.2 ka BP event) and its correlation with an intensification in Akkadian military activity are implicated in precipitating a refugee crisis among Amorite communities in this zone of uncertainty that led to their movement into neighboring regions.

On the right side of the Lower Tiber Valley, the transition between the Final Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age was characterised by two dramatic contemporaneous events: the rapid abandonment of the Final Bronze Age fortified villages and the rise of a large unitary centre on the site of Veii. This pattern of settlements was found throughout the whole of coastal southern Etruria, where by the end of the tenth and the beginning of the ninth century BC the Final Bronze Age landscape composed of clusters of small fortified villages was transformed into one of large centralised fortified settlements such as Veii, Caere, Tarquinii and Vulci (Figure 8).

The settlement landscape in the territory of Rome shows continuity with respect to the previous phase. The evidence from Rome itself is relatively scarce, due mainly to the destruction of the Esquiline necropolis. However, studies relating to the satellite centres and their cemeteries reveal important aspects of the economy of this period.

4. Mercenaries and Merchants: Networks of Political and Economic Power, 2000–1800 BC

The establishment of Amorite dynasties are documented from Mesopotamia to the Levant during the early second millennium BC. The increasing role of Amorites in mercantile endeavors, including the founding of new settlements, are illustrated, and this activity is placed in context with the contemporaneous evidence for the Old Assyrian merchant colony at Kanesh in Anatolia and the Asiatic enclave at Avaris in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom.

Our knowledge of the Roman economy in the fifth century BC is still limited by the scarcity of archaeological contexts compared to the previous century and by the lack of a precise typology of fifth-century potteries. As for the sixth century BC, we have a very limited number of funerary contexts probably because of the effect of funerary laws against luxury burials, but published settlement contexts dating back to the fifth century (and above all to the second half of the century), which could highlight the material culture of this period, are also few in number.

During the fourth century BC, the economy of Rome changed profoundly in terms of the acquisition and control of land. The whole period was characterised by dialectics between patricians and plebeians, and by land reforms and colonisation, culminating in the passing of the leges Liciniae Sextiae in 367 BC and Appius Claudius’ social reforms of 312 BC, which took place when Rome already had already full control of the central coastal Tyrrhenian area and of a great part of southern Italy.

The transition from the Final Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age was accompanied by many social and economic phenomena and was linked to an increasingly complex social evolution which is usually defined as the transformation of villages into cities in human geographical terms, and of chiefdoms or tribal states into early states in socio-archaeological models.

On the basis of settlement dislocation and thanks also to careful settlement size analysis of the whole Tiber valley, we can hypothesise that in Phase IVA Rome exercised a kind of hegemony over an area of at least 500 km, which extended from Crustumerium to Ficana and which probably included small parts of the coastal area and of the right bank of the Tiber. The territory of Rome in this phase can be described in terms of the city state model: a central place with satellite settlements acting as fortresses along the boundaries.