INTRODUCTION

In this chapter we will discuss centralization and proto-urbanization in the three RPC study regions for the period of the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Our perspective will be comparative, with occasional references to the broader geographical framework of Central and South-Italy. A first attempt at comparing the three RPC regions was made in a paper presented by one of us during a conference held at the British Academy in November 2002 on Mediterranean Urbanization between 800 and 600 BC. The trends and problems noted in that paper regarding the settlement developments of the three regions have been incorporated in this chapter, although we have extended the comparison to the formative periods of the Bronze Age and Iron Age in which Archaic urbanization is rooted. Moreover, we will place less emphasis on the Late Iron Age and Archaic periods, which are discussed separately in chapters 6 and 7.

In Italian protohistorical archaeology, the terms centralization and proto-urbanization are used to refer to the physical processes of settlement nucleation, the establishment of central places and the consequent growth of a settlement hierarchy. This process included rural infill of the landscape in the form of smaller ‘satellite’ sites, ‘farmsteads’, and other activity areas in the landscape that are related to centralized settlements. Tracing and studying this gradual filling-up of the countryside has been an important goal of the field surveys of the RPC project, and it therefore features prominently in the comparisons drawn in the project. From this perspective, the study of the physical nature and spatial configuration of the archaeological sites encountered during the field surveys, including the smallest, adds significantly to our understanding of centralization and proto-urbanization. Any increase in the complexity of the settlement hierarchy likely indicates an increase in the socio-economic and political complexity of a given society. Various indicators of socio-economical and political complexity may contribute to our analysis, such as the physical nature of the archaeological sites, the configuration of the regional settlement pattern, and factors such as demography and subsistence, that have been pivotal in much of the research by the RPC project. Other indicators include craft specialization, exchange, accumulation of goods, social relations within and between communities, as well as cultural identity.