VEII IN CONTEXT Roberta Cascino, Helga Di Giuseppe, Maria Teresa Di Sarcina, Sergio Fontana, Helen L. Patterson, Marco Rendeli & Andrea Schiappelli VEII IN THE PROTOHISTORIC PERIOD: A TOPOGRAPHICAL AND TERRITORIAL ANALYSIS, Andrea Schiappelli N owadays most would support the hypothesis that the birth in South Etruria of large, ‘proto- urban’, centres in the initial phase of the Early Iron Age (and continuing into the next phase), was not a sudden and completely unexpected event. 1 Although clearly on a completely different (much larger) scale, it was in fact the result of the coming to maturity of the settlement forms that had developed in the preceding centuries. Considering South Etruria as a whole (Fig. 6.1a), an earlier study of the evidence from Veii has described the sequence of settlement dynamics during the course of the Bronze Age as mainly charac- terized by a progressive selection and concentration of settlements on sites located in advantageous, naturally defensive positions (di Gennaro, Schiappelli and Amoroso 2004) (Table 6.1). Due to its volcanic geomorphology, northern Latium presents a wide range of reliefs and tufaceous plateaux surrounded, and thus defended, by steep slopes, thousands of years of fluvial erosion having left them isolated or semi-isolated from surrounding geological formations. Thus, there was a broad range of options available for choosing a suitable site for a settlement, including the availability of resources and the site’s strategic significance within the territory, the latter judged on factors such as its position with regard to natural communication routes, the defensive potential of the site’s topography, the lines of sight from it, and the distance from the sea and/or lakes. Such high ground and plateaux, known locally as castelline, were increasingly attractive to communities from the Early Bronze Age onwards. 2 During this period, although settlement appears anything but stable, there seem to be the first signs of interest in sites in easily defendable positions (a quarter of the total). Subsequently, during the early phases of the early Middle Bronze Age (c. 1700–1500 BC), and concomitant with a general growth in the region’s population, there was a decline in the number of settlements in open areas, but a corresponding increase in the number of those on suitable high ground. 3 A similar preference for this type of location can be seen (without any appreciable variations in patterns, and together with the proliferation of small settlements that fell within the sphere of the larger centres), 4 in the Middle Bronze Age 3 (1500–1350 BC). However, this phenomenon shows itself much more markedly in the Late Bronze Age (1350–1200 BC). The data available for this period, although often elusive on the ground, attest that in 44% of cases communities decided to settle on castelline and/or on sites with similar strategic characteristics. In many cases 5 the less secure sites were abandoned, occupation of sites that responded to defensive needs continued 6 and a certain number of new sites were identified. In South Etruria, at the threshold of the Late Bronze Age, it seems possible to detect — for example in the appearance in the main centres of certain dwellings that differ markedly from the rest of the houses 7 — the emergence of an aristocracy, perhaps the result of the growing disparity in social con- ditions among the various members of or among the family groups within the community. These e ´lites also must have made themselves very useful, if not essential, as high-status representatives in trading relationships with the Aegean peoples. Such contacts, occurring mainly in southern Italy but attested also in the central Etruscan area (and indicative also of the movement of craftsmen and/or warriors from Italy to the Mycenean world (Peroni 1996: 278–92; Bettelli 1999)), became more frequent precisely during the Late Bronze Age. However, these contacts did not trigger, at least immediately, sudden changes in the internal organization of the local communities.