| dc.description.abstract | Italy, before Rome took leadership of the peninsula, hosted multiple cultures, languages, community forms, and powerful hubs. These linked into different sectors of the network that stretched across the Mediterranean and to the north. This chapter explores what this diversity entailed and traces the transformations that led to the eventual demise of a multi-polar Italy. In so doing it questions the model of regional cohesion for the early history of the peninsula, which breaks down once sites are considered individually and as part of wider networks than the territorial perspective allows. Material culture is essential to gain an understanding of what was distinctive and shared between groups that developed city-states and others that preferred a more diffuse settlement pattern. It also makes visible the agency of sectors of society that are under-represented, such as women. A key underlying theme is the extent to which the changes were triggered by internal and external forces. This chapter will consider what fueled growth and centralization; the role played by supra-community structures and by institutions such as mercenaries, the system of guest friendship, and large rural sanctuary sites. Through such an exploration it looks at how competing models succumbed to the forces of cohesion, of which Rome was as much a product as a contributor. | en_GB |
