Before the city: the last villages and proto-urban centres between the Po and Tiber rivers

During the first half of the 12th century BC in continental Italy important changes were taking place in the geo-political order. Societies that had previously been highly developed on the demographic and socio-economic level, such as the Terramare of the Po valley, disappeared or underwent profound upheaval. In the following centuries radical changes led to different forms of economic and territorial organization and also to new social and political systems. The modalities of change present some common traits but also essential differences, which, on the threshold of the first millennium BC, gave rise to varying outcomes. In this perspective, the present contribution examines the area between the Po and Tiber rivers, analyzing different trajectories and outcomes. In some areas these led to the formation of large proto-urban centres, anticipating the future city-states of the historical age, while in others they led to political entities with less pronounced characteristics in the proto-urban sense. One of the elements that seem to have played a determining role in these different outcomes appears to be the extent of the crisis that affected the area examined around the middle of the 12th century BC, and hence also the different demographic consistency, as well as the economic and political organization expressed by these societies in the closing centuries of the II millennium BC.