Thursday, November 14th

Register to attend the Keynote Address in-person HERE. Register to attend via Zoom HERE.

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Spaces of Contact and Landscapes of Diversity: Shaping Cultural Encounters in the Iron Age West Mediterranean

Peter van Dommelen, Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Anthropology

As connectivity and colonialism have become entrenched as the new buzzwords of the Iron Age, the spaces in which these processes played out have received much less attention than the connections that were created and the influences and transformations that ensued; the corollary question of who actually shaped these spaces has accordingly barely been posed. It is thus my intention to turn the affirmative statement of this year’s workshop into an open question and to explore who shaped which spaces. In other words, whose agencies can we discern in the complex spaces and interactions that defined much of the Iron Age writ large across the West Mediterranean?

In order to bring out the rich cultural diversity of the wider West Mediterranean and its islandscapes, I will roam well beyond the Tuscan hills and the Maremma coastlands and reach out across the Tyrrhenian Sea to the shores of the Iberian Levante – taking in what on this occasion I may term the ‘outer spaces’ of the West Mediterranean, including the Tyrrhenian islands of Sardinia and Sicily.

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Friday, November 15th

Register for the Friday conference HERE.

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Shaping a city in Etruria: the case study of Kainua-Marzabotto

Elisabetta Govi, Professoressa Ordinaria in Etruscologia, Università di Bologna

The Etruscan city of Kainua (Marzabotto), near Felsina (Bologna) in the Po Valley, was re-founded in the late 6th and early 5th centuries B.C. according to astronomical principles to which corresponds a foundation rite that can be reconstructed in its stages. The urban layout reveals logics of space division, between public and private areas, which ongoing excavations of the University of Bologna have well clarified. The dimension of the sacred greatly affects urban planning articulation, and temples shape the space of the city, also conditioning its productive economy. Within the urban sanctuary being excavated, ritual space is intertwined with ritual space, with truly unusual architectural choices. Complex dynamics of social and political transformation, well reflected by the recently discovered inscriptions, emerge in the management of the sacred by the groups in power.

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“Zoning” decisions in early central Italian urbanism

Nicola Terrenato, Ester B. Van Deman Professor and Director of the Kelsey Museum, Michigan

As cities started to come together in early first millennium BCE Etruria and Latium, their inhabitants encountered a new issue that they never had to face before: where to place some key new elements around the settlement. Graveyards, fortifications and cult places, for instance, were elements that had newly become communal to the whole settlement. There was an unprecedented need to decide how to make those spatial allocations. The paper explores the available evidence and poses some connected theoretical questions.

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Rethinking the urban space with spatial technologies and AI: the case of Vulci

Maurizio Forte, William and Sue Gross Professor of Classical Studies, Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Duke University

This talk examines how advanced spatial technologies, such as artificial intelligence and remote sensing, combined with archaeological excavations, are transforming the study and interpretation of ancient urban environments. A decade-long study initiative conducted by Duke University examined the evolution of urban space in Vulci (10th century BCE – 4th century CE), concentrating specifically on the southern region of the plateau, from Etruscan to Roman periods. This multidisciplinary approach redefines archaeological research and offers significant frameworks for analyzing also contemporary urbanism.

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Shaping Spaces between the City and the Sea. Caere and Pyrgi: an Etruscan City, its Port and maritime Sanctuary

Laura Maria Michetti, Professoressa Ordinaria in Etruscologia e Antichità italiche, La Sapienza

Starting from the 7th c. BC, the Etruscan city of Caere (Cerveteri, RM) and its ports played a fundamental role as a commercial hub in the Mediterranean sea, thanks to a favorable geographical position along the maritime routes towards the mineral resources of Central Italy. Its international role was so relevant, that Caere was the only city in the Tyrrhenian area to own a thesauròs in Delphi’s panellenic sanctuary (Strab. 5.220).

Due to its geographical position, Pyrgi was the first Etruscan available landing place along the Tyrrhenian routes. Pyrgi’s port and sanctuary have played a fundamental role in the history of the ancient Mediterranean Sea, since they were the outpost of Caere on the sea.

Connected to Caere through a monumental road, the maritime settlement is the main expression of a strongly characterized physical and socio-political landscape and of the correlation between the natural environment and the organization of the coastal settlements.

In my talk, I will focus on the relationship between Caere and Pyrgi and the the strategies through which the city organized, shaped, and managed its coastal territory.

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Bringing Volume to the Shape of Urban Space: A case study from the Punic-Roman city of Tharros, Sardinia

Steven Ellis, Professor, University of Cincinnati

To give shape to a Roman city – whether by conceptualizing their various activities, plotting the finds and fixtures here and there, or delineating their many structural parts across a map, even excavating them down to bedrock – can be an exercise that is too often limited to two-dimensional constructs. In response, this presentation will aim to positively complicate some of the ways in which we can think about the shaping of urban space, with special attention to what can come from archaeological excavation. Taking the University of Cincinnati excavations at the Punic- Roman city of Tharros as our primary case study, I will look at how the volumetric makeup of a city – at both a micro- and macro-contextual scale – can provide wholly new information on the episodic development of a city over time and space. At the micro-level, we will test the associative relationships between the taphonomic contexts and the objects recovered within them, as well as consider strategies for excavation at scale. At the macro-level, our enquiries shift in focus from archaeological method toward two critical episodes of the ancient past: the first being the obliteration of Tharros’ Punic urbanscape in the Roman period, which might reflect Lisa Fentress’ “coercive urbanism”; the second being some new thoughts (indeed some new dates, being several centuries earlier) on the spatially checquered abandonment of the city.