Insegnamento
PREHISTORY AND PROTOHISTORY
Docente
ALESSANDRO VANZETTI
The students will gain a wide overview of the Pre- and Protohistory of Central Italy; will acquire knowledge about changes in local societies that can highlight the trend toward the formation of the city of Rome; will be informed about the ongoing scientific debate.
The course will explore the role of the historical regions of Ancient Latium and Southern Etruria (modern Administrative Latium region), during a long time period, i.e. from the start of productive economy (Neolithic) to the formation of the city of Rome, during the Early Iron Age.
In fact, the emergence of the premises for the extraordinary development of Rome are not rooted in a clear long-term trend. Rome grew from a bundle of rather small villages to a city of respectable size in a couple of centuries or less, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, to a big town by the VI cent. BCE and a megalopolis by the end of the millennium.
Whereas other courses (Etruscology and Roman History) deal respectively with the later development of Rome in the frame of the Central-Tyrrhenian area and with the urban structure of the megalopolis, the goal of this course is to show how different factors emerging through time could coagulate to sustain Central Tyrrhenian and Roman sudden growth process.
- Lessons 1-4. Prehistory and producing communities of Latium (6000-700 BCE): research traditions; historical dating, dendrochronology and radiocarbon; geographic environment, climatic changes and economic trends.
- Lessons 5. Neolithization in the Mediterranean framework.
- Lessons 6-8. Neolithic in Italy: la Marmotta settlement; dead and rituals; economies.
- Lessons 9-13: Metals and Copper age: life and death; cultural encounters across the Tiber; the Beaker globalization; the economy.
- Lessons 14-20. The Bronze Age: continuity and change; cultural developments in mid-Tyrrhenian Italy; patterns of settlement development; the palafitta sites; Mycenaean connections; funerary and ritual aspects; case studies (Sorgenti della Nova, Mount Cimino).
- Lesson 21. Ideological change in burial through the Bronze and the iron Age.
- Lessons 22-29. Iron Age: the formation of protourban centers in South Etruria and Latium; Villanovan and Latial groups; the funerary record and the society.
- Lesson 30. Summing up and final discussion.
Each student has to read 2 mandatory papers (1-2) and 2 other choice papers among the recommended ones (3-10). Students can choose both papers dedicated to a specific period, or any couple of papers they might prefer.
MANDATORY READINGS:
1) Diamond, J. 2002. Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication, in Nature 418, pp. 700-707.
2) Stoddart, S. et al. 2019. Tyrrhenian central Italy: Holocene population and landscape ecology, The Holocene, 29, pp. 761-775.
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
- NEOLITHIC
3) Harris, J. 2015. Travels to La Marmotta: a Neolithic settlement beneath the waters of lake Bracciano. Current World Archaeology, 71, pp. 40-42.
4) Radi, G. & Petrinelli Pannocchia, C. 2018. The beginning of the Neolithic era in Central Italy, Quaternary International 470, pp. 270-284.
- COPPER AGE
5) Dolfini, A. et al. 2008. Early Copper Metallurgy in Central Italy: issues of production and social consumption, in Second International conference Archaeometallurgy in Europe (Aquileia, 17-21.07.2007), Milano, pp. 1-8.
6) Negroni Catacchio, N. ,Aspesi, M. & Sala, A.J. 2016. The Chalcolithic culture of Rinaldone: the core area, in O. Rickards & L. Sarti (eds.), Biological and Cultural Heritage of the central-southern Italian population through 30 thousand years, Roma, pp. 41-57.
- BRONZE AGE
7) Angle, M., Sacchi, E. & Zarattini A. 2011. A hidden perilacustrine settlement: a village and its fields during the Middle Bronze Age, in M. van Leusen G. Pizziolo & L. Sarti (eds.), Hidden landscapes of Mediterranean Europe. Cultural and methodological biases in pre- and protohistoric landscape studies, Proceedings of the international meeting (Siena, Italy, May 25-27, 2007), (eds.), BAR International Series 2320, Oxford, pp. 231-236.
8) Bietti Sestieri, A.M. 1988. The "Mycenaean connection" and its impact on the central Mediterranean societies, Dialoghi di Archeologia 6, pp. 23-51.
- IRON AGE
9) Alessandri, L. 2016. Hierarchical and federative polities in protohistoric Latium Vetus. An analysis of Bronze Age and Early Iron Age settlement organization, in P. Attema, J. Seubers & S. Willemsen (eds.), Early states, territories and settlements in protohistoric Central Italy, Proceedings of the Conference (Groningen 2013), Corollaria Crustumina 2, Eelde, pp. 67-82.
10) Alessandri, L. 2015, Exploring territories: bubble model and minimum number of contemporary settlements. A case study from Etruria and Latium Vetus from the Early Bronze
age to the Early Iron age, Origini XXXVII, pp. 175-199.
All the papers are available in the .pdf format in the web page of the course.
The teaching activity and learning process is based on the combination of:
1) 30 video-lectures (the professor presents the course contents, in a way similar to classroom frontal teaching, supported by slides).
2) Individual study: Each student has to read 2 mandatory papers (see above, 1-2) and 2 other choice papers among the recommended ones (see above, 3-10).
Students can choose both papers dedicated to a specific period, or any couple of papers he might prefer.
3)Interactive activity: the students will have to decide one or both of their 2 choice papers, on which to focus, and write a short essay for the exam (refer to the Guidelines, published on the web page of the course) Before the exam, an online session will join together students and professor, for a discussion forum, in which it is required that each student presents the chosen paper(s), leading to an open discussion forum, including students and professor.
For the learning of the discipline, video-lectures and other teaching materials are available to students on the web page of the course.
Professor and tutor will assist the students during the entire academic year through e-mail correspondence and, at the student's request, video-reception (dates and times to be agreed in advance with the professor and the tutor).
Students should attend the video-lectures and read the choice papers, and possibly more of the recommended ones, and try on their own to create connections. Connecting arguments is the crucial aspect of this course.
Furthermore, students will self-evaluate their level of learning and their knowledge about the main issues of the course by self-answering to a number of questions, that are available on the web page of the course.
The evaluation will consist in:
- a written short essay on the choice readings or on a theme of the course. The student's paper must be sent to professor at least 1 week before the exam. The Guidelines for the short essay and the papers to be discussed are available on the web page of the course.
- an oral exam based upon the topics addressed by the video-lectures. During the exam a discussion will be developed about the choice readings, connecting them to the written paper and to the major arguments of the course.
The course has the goal to give to the student a comprehensive, albeit short, information about prehistoric and protohistoric developments in Central Tyrrhenian Italy, and to insert it in the wider discussion about human growth of complexity and environmental impact.
The ensuing knowledge can be applied directly (setting apart scholarly research) in writing articles for popularizing journals or websites or texts for museums and exhibitions, and act as a Museum guide. Furthermore, it gives basic competence on archaeological materials and structures that can be encountered in field archaeology, e.g. in preventive archaeology, as for Pre- and Protohistory.
More generally, the knowledge and competencies are part of the general goals of the whole Master Degree, i.e. it will allow the graduates to be employed as professional archaeologists in a wide range of potential institutions, such as those connected to cultural heritage management, protection and valorisation, e.g. museums, archaeological sites; public administrations; academic and research entities; archaeological excavations associations or cooperatives; organisations working in the field of tourism, history, architecture etc.
The students are encouraged to contact the tutor and the professor (mail above) for any doubt or possible risk of misunderstanding, as well as for the request of further readings for a tailored in-depth study.
The professor accepts requests of thesis, spanning on the whole range of the course, and -if required- also on other pre-and protohistoric or theoretical and methodological aspects of the subject.