C 03: Resources and the Formation of Societies, Settlement Areas and Cultural Identities of the Italian Peninsula in the First Millenium BC

Scientific Aims

The project strives for a reconstruction of settlement processes and their context, of the formation of societies, and of the creation of cultural identities on the Italian peninsula, based on the extended definition of resources used by the Collaborative Research Centre and by this for an innovative approach to understand phenomena of settlement, cultural contacts and social and cultural change. Two regions, including their respective hinterland, will be analysed and compared: the Etruscan dominated region on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea on one hand, and ‘Magna Graecia’, the Greek settled region of Southern Italy on the other. In the beginning the focus will be on the time from the 8th to the first half of the 5th cent. BC. During the subsequent phases of funding the periods of fundamental re-formations of the socio-political landscape of Italy during the 4th and 5th cent. BC and during Hellenistic times when the peninsula was included in the Roman sphere of control will be examined.
The basic concept of the Collaborative Resource Centre, defining resources as a social and cultural construct is central for the comparative analysis of these regions. Raw-materials, animals and plants as well as environments and the tangible conditions offered by them, but also objects, monumental spaces and landscapes only turn into resources through a specific evaluation within the context of cultural action.

The aims of the project during the initial phase of funding deal with two central aspects of the Collaborative Research Centre.

1. Resources within a concept of interactions in culture and society.
The Collaborative Research Centre understands resources as fundamental for the creation, perpetuation and transformation of social groups and societies. It is a central aim of the project during the initial phase of funding to create a detailed picture of the areas of settlement mentioned above as spaces for interaction using archaeological, as well as historical data. This reconstruction has to cope with the complex cultural and ethnic conditions in Italy during the 1st cent. BC, but also with similar supra-regional, Mediterranean phenomena. The focus is on settlements and settlement areas of two historically important regions of the Italian peninsula as targets or meeting point for foreigners or groups of foreigners, as well as places and spaces of cultural interaction and construction of cultural identity. A diachronic analysis of the structure of settlements spaces using a comparative perspective will explore the changes within their relational networks. These spaces of interaction are central settlements, sanctuaries and cemeteries, in which the evaluations of resources were negotiated, thus turning into resources themselves.

2. ResourceComplexes. Materials – compositions – regimes – representations.
The project follows the idea of previous studies that ores and metals, as well as arable land were resources central for the construction of social practices and regimes. An archaeological analysis of this dimension of resources (thus of relevance for the Collaborative Resource Centre) can be conducted if ResourceComplexes are taken into account. These consist of raw-materials and environments, but also include knowledge and technologies of development, as well as artefacts and monumental structures and even the regimes and representations created by the circulation and consumption during rites. Thus, ResourceComplexes open the possibility to analyse socio-cultural dynamics related to symbolic orders, representations and evaluations of resources. The focus of project C 03 is on ResourceComplexes comprising metals and agriculture, but will deal especially with regimes and representations created by the use of resources. Several archaeological sites, settlements, sanctuaries and burials, like Cerveteri or Metapont, the sanctuaries of Gravisca or Lokroi Epizephyrioi and the necropolises of Vetulonia or Pontecagnano will serve as examples. Approaches taken from contextual archaeology will be applied to analyse settlement spaces, cemeteries and sanctuaries in their role as spaces for intentional deposition or as spatial orders of objects and representations in a diachronic and comparative way.

Long-term Perspective

This analysis of ‘intentional data’ like artefacts, monuments and shaped spaces will be conducted during the initial phase of funding using published evidence from the period between the 8th and 5th cent. BC. Subsequently it will be carried out for the later Classical and Hellenistic periods as well. During the later phases of funding ores and soils of the relevant regions will also be analysed with archaeometallurgical, archaeobotanical and pedological methods in order to contrast cultural constructions with the reconstructions of real life conditions.

Impact for the Collaborative Research Centre

The project adds historical and archaeological studies of processes in the early history of the Italian peninsula to the Collaborative Research Centre. In these processes resources in their traditional definition as raw-materials play a significant role. Within the Collaborative Research Centre the results can be compared with those from other projects especially from division C, where resources are seen as symbolic capital of social groups and the materiality and mediality of constructions of regimes, representations and evaluations of resources are explored.

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