This volume offers the first comprehensive overview of the urbanization processes that took place south and north of the Alps during the early first millennium BC, highlighting the interactions between the different geographical areas.
The 26 chapters included in this book provide a combination of theoretical and methodological insights into urbanisation processes, regional overviews, and up-to-date evidence from key archaeological sites. The latter comprise both well-established names such as the Heuneburg, Vix-Mont Lassois, Verucchio, Marzabotto, and Spina, as well as other sites that are less well-known but equally relevant for the understanding of centralization processes during the Iron Age.
In particular, this volume brings together, for the first time, the rich archaeological evidence for urban and proto-urban sites in northern Italy, a region that has traditionally been neglected or underestimated in accounts on Iron Age urbanisation. Thus, the book transcends previous barriers in scholarship and helps to readdress one of the most attractive topics of current archaeological research: the multiple and nonlinear pathways towards urbanization.
PART 1 – URBAN ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES ACROSS THE ALPS
Early Urbanism South and North of the Alps: An Introduction
Lorenzo Zamboni, Manuel Fernández-Götz and Carola Metzner-Nebelsick
Aspects of Urbanism in Later Bronze Age Northern Italy Mark Pearce
Urbanisation and Deurbanisation in the European Iron Age: Definitions, Debates, and Cycles
Manuel Fernández-Götz
From Genoa to Günzburg. New Trajectories of Urbanisation and Acculturation between the Mediterranean and South-Central Europe
Louis Nebelsick and Carola Metzner-Nebelsick
PART 2 – EARLY URBANISATION PROCESSES IN NORTHERN ITALY
Verucchio: The Iron Age Settlement
Paolo Rondini and Lorenzo Zamboni
Archaeology of Early Felsina. The Birth of a Villanovan City
Jacopo Ortalli
Spheres of Consumption of Metalwork and Trans-regional Interactions at the Onset of the Urban Phenomenon in Northern Italy
Cristiano Iaia
Urbanism and Architecture in the Etruscan City of Kainua-Marzabotto: New Perspectives
Elisabetta Govi, Chiara Pizzirani and Andrea Gaucci
Relationships between City and Necropolis in Northeast Italy
Giovanna Gambacurta
The Proto-urban Phenomenon in Veneto: A Review of the Population Dynamics of the Settlement of Oppeano (Verona)
Massimo Saracino and Alessandro Guidi
Coazze near Gazzo Veronese, on the Fringes of Veneto and Etruria Padana, NE Italy
Alessandro Vanzetti, Matteo Bertoldo, Francesca Di Maria, Dario Monti, Luciano Salzani and Fabio Saccoccio
The Etruscan Settlement of Adria (Italy, Rovigo): New Data from the Excavations in Via Ex Riformati (2015-2016)
Simonetta Bonomi, Maria Cristina Vallicelli and Claudio Balista
Exploring Spina: Urbanism, Architecture, and Material Culture
Aleksandra Mistireki and Lorenzo Zamboni
The Hidden City: Reconstructing the Urban Structure of the Etruscan Harbour of Forcello di Bagnolo San Vito through Excavations and Non-invasive Methods
Rainer Komp, Tommaso Quirino and Marta Rapi
The Early Iron Age Protourbanisation along the Ticino River and around Como
Raffaele Carlo de Marinis and Stefania Casini
The First Results of Geophysical Prospections Using the ADS Method on the Proto-urban Settlement Site of Como, Spina Verde
Fabian Welc, Louis Nebelsick, Carola Metzner-Nebelsick, Ines Balzer, Alessandro Vanzetti, and Barbara Grassi
Bergamo and Parre during the Early Iron Age: Early Urbanism and the Alpine World
Raffaella Poggiani Keller and Paolo Rondini
PART 3 – EARLY URBANISATION PROCESSES IN CENTRAL EUROPE
Earliest Town North of the Alps. New Excavations and Research in the Heuneburg Region
Dirk Krausse, Leif Hansen and Roberto Tarpini
Centralisation Processes at the Fürstensitz Princely Seat on Mount Ipf in the Nördlinger Ries, Southern Germany
Rüdiger Krause
Early Urbanism and the Relationship between Northern Italy and Bohemia in the Early Iron Age
Miloslav Chytráček
Vix: The Temptation of the City
Bruno Chaume
Bourges-Avaricum: A Western Example of a Princely Complex of c. 500 BC in Central France
Ian Ralston
The Early Iron Age Central Place at Most na Soči (NW Slovenia)
Sneža Tecco Hvala
The Dürrnberg Salt Metropolis: Catalyst of Communication and Complexity in La Tène Central Europe
Holger Wendling
PART 4 – CONCLUDING THOUGHTS AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
The Mediterranean at the Periphery of Urban Origins
Corinna Riva
Untold Riches of the Urban Form Central to the Pre-Roman European Experience
Simon Stoddart
Lorenzo Zamboni is Adjunct Professor at the University of Pavia, where he obtained his PhD in Archaeology with research on Spina. Since 2012 he has been co-director of the archaeological excavations at Iron Age Verucchio. His research covers a wide range of settlement, material, funerary, and theoretical aspects mainly concerning the human presence in Northern and Central Italy between the Final Bronze Age and the Roman period.
Manuel Fernández-Götz is Chancellor's Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. His main research intterests are Iron Age societies in central and western Europe and the archaeology of identities from a theoretical perspective. This research has resulted in numerous publications relating to the Iron Age of the Iberian Peninsula, northeast Gaul and southern Germany, including Identity and Power: The transformation of Iron Age societies in northeast Gaul (2014).
Carola Metzner-Nebelsick is Full Professor and Chair for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology at the Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology and the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces at the LMU Munich. She has directed several fieldwork and interdisciplinary research projects, including sites in Romania, Bavaria, Croatia, and Italy (Como). She was also co-speaker for the Munich Graduate School ‘Distant Worlds’, and PI of the LMU-based Research Unit ‘Transalpine Mobility and Cultural Transfer’. Her research interests focus on the European Bronze and Iron Ages with a wide thematic and geographical scope.
