The Peoples and Landscapes of Protohistoric and Classical Italy

The application of landscape archaeology has led to a new understanding of the relationships between Italic peoples, their environment, and the long-term processes of urbanization and state formation. By the final Bronze Age, complex settlement organizations and advanced ways of dividing up and working the land were in place across much of Italy; the pre-Roman Iron cultures built further on these geopolitical and socioeconomic foundations. This chapter discusses the impact on the landscape of land use and of exploitation of natural resources caused by the significantly increased human presence throughout Italy during the first millennium BCE, describing these in the broader context of climate change and other geological phenomena that occurred in this millennium.