Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy

Jeremy Armstrong and Aaron Rhodes-Schroder (eds.), Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change, Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023). 9782503602325.

Reviewed by Ulla Rajala, Stockholm University, Sweden, rajalaullam@gmail.com.

This volume originates from the conference “Exchanging Ideas: Trade, Technology, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy,” held in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2020, and I previously reviewed its sister volume Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy for Rhea Classical Reviews.1 As in that volume, the authors are mainly well-established mid-career scholars with some younger postdoctoral researchers presenting their results. The mix of European and other scholars is good, although the number of Italian scholars is low.

This volume consists of fourteen chapters. The first chapter, by Jeremy Amstrong and Aaron Rhodes-Schroder, discusses the challenges of approaching regional (ex)changes in the context of the postcolonial paradigm within Mediterranean-wide networks and microhistories. The editors and the contributors to the volume try to find more nuanced approaches than the traditional view, which asserts eastern origins for all of the innovations in these regional exchanges.

Nicola Terrenato’s contribution tries to understand how traditional Iron Age societies in central Italy adapted to the realities of the new, large cities of the future and how they dealt with this kind of upscaling. As a solution he presents the idea of bricolage, the repackaging of previous cultural forms to new phenomena (p. 40).2 His conceptualization and discussion of Fustel de Coulanges’s ideas on scaling-up and refunctionalizing traditional ideas are good and explain the adaptation to the new society. However, I oppose his presentation of the later central Italian Bronze Age as primitive and the area as an eventless rural backwater.3 His argumentation about the internal development of central Italian urbanism is plausible, but the uncritical presentation of central Italian communities as bucolic, calm, undeveloping entities is disquieting.4 I personally see the later Bronze Age communities growing and evolving and the move to a larger site as a communal choice against continuous conflict, which was the alternative.5 In addition, Terrenato does not discuss the fact that the study and excavation of the later Bronze Age sites has been limited, which could have been addressed more specifically.

     Franco De Angelis, in his discussion on the origins of the pre-Roman viticulture in Italy, perhaps shows the artificial boundary between prehistoric and classical archaeology in the study of pre-Roman Italy by addressing a phenomenon that has been well discussed by prehistorians. That viticulture predated Greek colonization is a well-established fact, having been shown for example for the Bronze Age northeastern Italy,6 with earlier evidence presented in a recent review article for the whole of Italy.7 Thus much of the argumentation in this chapter felt redundant. However, the vision of Etruscan cultural practices encouraging pottery production in Greece and the interpretation of the colonization as accelerating pre-existing cultural developments are delightful and emphasize less-discussed viewpoints that fit within the remit of the volume. I hope that carefully researched, interdisciplinary balanced assessments of colonial encounters like this are the future.

Marine Lechenault and Kewin Peche-Quilichini have written an excellent, compact chapter about the connectivities of Corsica in the Iron Age and Roman Republican era. It also serves as an introduction to the archaeology of Corsica by discussing what we know about those periods. The different parts of the island opened to new directions as a result of its rugged geography and the nearest external influences.

Another excellent and compact chapter is John North Hopkins’s analysis of the Ficoroni Cista, a bronze cist, found in Praenese, Italy, in 1745 and dated to 350-315 BCE. The author expertly shows that it was made from a combination of  Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Lucanian, Campanian, Apulian and Sicilian elements in a way where none of them is dominant. In the composition of this object, Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Lucanian, Campanian, Apulian and Sicilian elements came together in such a way that none of them is dominant, as the author expertly shows. The object was a product of a multicultural artistic environment, made for multicultural clientele, meant for elite exchange. Different elements could have been interpreted in the past in multiple ways, depending on the cultural background of the viewer.

Charlotte Potts examines the temple pairs in Pyrgi and Marzabotto and suggests that the pairing of two different kinds of temples, one more Greek in style and the other Tuscan, was intentional and reflects a more Italic interpretation of architecture and potentially local ritual practices. However, even with the pairing of the two, the order in which the temples were built was different in the two sites, so there is still more research to be done to find other examples before this argument stands and cannot be explained by chance. Nevertheless, this article has many interesting ideas, not the least the suggestion that we should consider the three-dimensional temple structures instead of just their floorplans. This approach would enhance the observation of the visible and invisible geographies of the temple building sites and the appreciation of the (dis)similarities of Greek and Tuscan architecture.

In the following article, Aaron Rhodes-Schroder demonstrates that the decline in the amount of painted Greek pottery in Tarquinia did not relate to an economic downturn but to an active choice. The new red-painted vases featured everyday depictions that did not resonate with the Etruscans’ chthonic needs for funerals. The earlier Greek vases found in funerary contexts in Tarquinia were mostly black-figure amphorae with specific mythological scenes or cups decorated in both black- and red-figure. He manages to show that all of the major themes had chthonic relevance. My minor complaint is the lack of graphs comparing quantitatively the occurrence of the mythical themes—and the lack of the mention of what vases were deposited later instead of Greek vases.

The contribution by Peter Attema, Barbara Belelli Marchesini, and Matthijs Catsman presents the concept of a consumption collective,8 a weaker application of a community of practice (pp. 117–18). In essence, Catsman compares in his network analyses, based on his MA dissertation, the contents of the “orientalising” tombs from Crustumerium to a series of local, regional, interregional, and global (Mediterranean-wide) material phenomena, tracing affiliations (connections) using network analysis as a methodological vehicle. Even more could have been made of the high percentage of local, Crustumerium-specific affiliations in sub-period IVA and the decreased local affiliations and increased Greek phenomena in sub-period IVB. Presenting details about the local material culture before the analysis might have improved the cohesion of this chapter, and more careful explanation of the two sets of affiliation graphs for the same sub-period would have made the method—which on first glance looks impressive—even more trustworthy. What is clear is that regional novelties were adapted to and embedded in local production and practices.

Amanda Pavlick takes the viewpoint of a commissioner or quantitative surveyor in an Archaic central Italian community who decided to build a novelty rectangular house with a stone foundation and tiled roof. Even if the stone foundations are mentioned, this article concentrates on  roofs, their requirements, and affordances. It is interesting to see how the early tile roofs in Rome all concentrate in the Forum whereas in Acquarossa they are located in different neighborhoods, suggesting different social and political models. This chapter has many interesting features, not least the premise, but I was left with the impression that Pavlick is suppressing a discussion on class and status. In addition, the discussion on labor emphasized at the beginning is subdued in the conclusions.

Gijs Tol has written an excellent chapter on the intensification of rural settlement during the Archaic period in southern Latium and the dating of red augite-rich fabrics. He argues that we will get a more truthful picture of rural development by combining information from urban and rural excavations and expecting a typical farm to reveal the same typological range as the urban centers, as is suggested by excavated farms in central Italy. The drastic infill during the period thus gives way to a more gradual filling of the landscape, granting space for village-formation and the foundation of farms at the boundary of the territories of the central urban settlements.

Camilla Norman’s idea of the interpretation of both ritual and domestic motifs in Daunian statue-stelae and their place in the wider ritual system of pre-Roman Italy, especially in Adriatic Italy, is less convincing. The discussion of everyday motifs on the Daunian material and their potentially ritual context is believable, but the choice of the examples from outside the Daunian sphere seems not to be a result of a systematic survey of artworks but an eclectic selection of objects that feature similar designs. She tries to expand her interpretation to cover the whole of Italy, but in order to make the interpretation more credible, the analysis of the artworks should be systematic, not piecemeal.

Keely Heuer’s attempt to try to understand the isolated heads in South Italian and Etruscan vase painting does consider the whole corpus. Heuer’s attempt to understand the isolated heads as a common motif in South Italian and Etruscan vase painting. She explores the mythical scenes connected to death that are paired with this motif as well as the funerary contexts of these vases. By studying the iconography of the motif, she suggests that the motif is related to processes and to situations in flux, perhaps signifying hope of a good result after death.

William Balco presents the interesting case of mixed-style feasting hardware blending Greek and indigenous elements used by the indigenous Elymians and the colonial Phoenicians, but not by the Greeks, in western Sicily in their feasts. Balco concentrates on the status and identity these vessels conveyed, but does not dissect from a postcolonial perspective the situation or discuss the power relations between the communities. He presents the results of the petrological and technical analyses that revealed that the fabrics were those of ingenious production but does not discuss the find contexts of the vessels, which might have revealed patterns in settlement sites and cemeteries. These mixed-style vessels were ultimately replaced by the imported Greek vessels, a reality that also warrants more discussion.

The last chapter in the book is a longer collaboration by Attema and others that takes a longue durée approach to local pottery production and the adoption and adaptation of foreign pottery forms in the Sibaritide. It starts from the Middle Bronze Age and moves through the Later Bronze Age to the Iron Age and Archaic period, when the indigenous site of Timpone della Motta was depopulated, except the Greek sanctuary.  The article is an important reminder of the Dominant versus the Non-Dominant, Enontrians and Greeks on the Timpone della Motta and in the Sibaritide project, ran by Kleibrink,9 that shone light on the relations between the Greek and indigenous populations at a time when it was not yet fashionable. The article is a reminder that connectivity with the eastern Mediterranean predated Greek colonization, something that is self-evident for pre- and protohistorians. The book does not have an epilogue or concluding chapter, but this article summarizes chronologically the periods discussed and reminds one of the key themes of the book, the interactions of different cultures and the resulting hybridity.

All in all, this is a superb volume covering different instances of adoption, adaptation, and innovation in pre-Roman Italy. There are many chapters with novel ideas and even the weakest present interesting phenomena. I may criticize some chapters, but as a whole the volume is better than your average conference proceedings. The articles by Attema; Belelli, Marchesini, and Catsman; and Tol publish new material, providing an up-to-date list of references. Concepts are explained well, so even the younger students will find this volume useful. I recommend this volume to all interested in pre-Roman material culture.

It is also easy to see why these articles were chosen for this volume and not its sister volume, in which the articles concentrated more clearly on production and connectivity. These articles all address change, and adoption and adaptation as concepts are not just empty generalizations but are evaluated as individual phenomena. Together, the two volumes provide an excellent showcase of the latest research on pre-Roman Italy, but both volumes also stand alone perfectly well.

Table of Contents

1. Rethinking Cultural (Ex)Change in Pre-Roman Italy (19–31) / Jeremy Armstrong and Aaron Rhodes-Schroder
2. The Paradox of Innovation in Conservative Societies: Cultural Self-Consistency and Bricolage in Iron Age Central Italy (33–46) / Nicola Terrenato
3. Mixing Up Mediterranean Innovation: The Case of Viticulture and Wine (47–58) / Franco De Angelis
4. The World has Changed: Insularity and Tyrrhenian Connectivity during the Corsican Iron Ages (59–70) / Marine Lechenault and Kewin Peche-Quilichini
5. Folding Meaning in an Object: The Ficoroni Cista and the Heterarchy of Art in Early Italy (71–83) / John North Hopkins
6. Virtue in Variety: Contrasting Temple Design in Etruscan Italy (85–100) / Charlotte R. Potts
7. The Demon Is in the Detail: Greek Pottery in Etruscan Funerary Contexts (101–15) / Aaron Rhodes-Schroder
8. Local Choices in a Networked World: Funerary Practices at Crustumerium (Lazio) during the Long Seventh Century BCE (117–46) / Peter Attema, Barbara Belelli Marchesini and Matthijs Catsman
9. From the Ground Up: Constructing Monumental Buildings in Archaic Central Italy (147–60) / Amanda K. Pavlick
10. The Archaic Countryside Revisited: A Ceramic Approach to the Study of Archaic Rural Infill in Latium Vetus (161–75) / Gijs Tol
11. Ritual Connectivity in Adriatic Italy (177–92) / Camilla Norman
12. Face to Face: Isolated Heads in South Italian and Etruscan Visual Culture (193–219) / Keely Elizabeth Heuer
13. Feasting Transformed: Commensal Identity Expression and Social Transformation in Iron Age and Archaic Western Sicily (221–33) / William M. Balco
14. The Deep Past of Magna Graecia’s Pottery Traditions: Adoption and Adaptation at Timpone della Motta and in the Sibaritide (Northern Calabria, Italy) between the Middle Bronze Age and the Archaic Period (235–75) / Peter Attema, Carmelo Colelli, Martin Guggisberg, Francesca Ippolito, Jan Kindberg Jacobsen, Gloria Mittica, Wieke de Neef, and Sine Grove Saxkjær

Notes

1. Jeremy Armstrong and Sheira Cohen, eds., Production, Trade, and Connectivity in Pre-Roman Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2022). For my review, see https://rheaclassicalreviews.com/2025/10/16/rajala-on-armstrong-and-cohen/.

2. And see also Nicola Terrenato, “The Romanization of Italy: Global Acculturation or Cultural Bricolage?,” Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal 1997, pp. 20–27, doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/TRAC1997_20_27; Nicola Terrenato, “Patterns of Cultural Change in Roman Italy: Non-Elite Religion and the Defense of Cultural Self-Consistency,” in Religiöse Vielfalt und soziale Integration, ed. Martin Jehne, Bernhard Linke, and Jörg Rüpke, Studien zur Alten Geschichte 17 (Heidelberg: Verlag Antike, 2013), pp. 43–60.

3. Terrenato states,“The period covering the Middle and Late Bronze Age…cannot be described as eventful by any stretch of the imagination” (p. 35).

4. For example, when Terrenato notes that “while elsewhere monumental settlements spectacularly rose and collapsed, central Italian settlements maintained their modest nature” (p. 35).

5. For the idea of the population pressure and avoidance of conflict behind the change in the settlement pattern, see Ulla Rajala “The Concentration and Centralization of Late Prehistoric Settlement in Central Italy: The Evidence from the Nepi Survey,” Papers of the British School at Rome 81 (2013), pp. 1–38.

6. Alessandra Pecci, Elisabetta Borgna, Simona Mileto, et al., “Wine Consumption in Bronze Age Italy: Combining Organic Residue Analysis, Botanical Data and Ceramic Variability,” Journal of Archaeological Science 123 (2020), 105256, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105256.

7. Mariano Ucchesu, Sarah Ivorra, Vincent Bonhomme, et al., “Tracing the Emergence of Domesticated Grapevine in Italy,” PLoS ONE 20, no. 4 (2025).

8. Frederik Farlander, The Materiality of Serial Practice. A Microarchaeology of Burial, Gotarc Series B 23 (Gothenburg: Department of Archaeology, Gothenburg University, 2003).

9. See Marianne Kleibrink, Oenotrians at Lagaria near Sybaris: A Native Proto-Urban Centralised Settlement (London: Accordia Research Institute, University of London, 2006).

Discussion

1. I noticed that the volume does not have many articles on northern Italy and was curious whether this was a result of the content of the papers or perhaps an intentional choice. If the latter, might you elaborate on what your thoughts were for this choice?

The focus on central and southern Italy in the volume was the result of two factors. First, although we did invite some contributions, the core of both this volume and its sister volume came from the conference hosted in Auckland in 2020. So, when considering the table of contents for both, we did not start with a blank slate but with an existing set of papers—and it simply turned out that most of those relating to northern Italy fit into the sister volume better. A second factor, albeit somewhat related, is that this volume consciously looked outward from Italy and towards the wider Mediterranean (while its sister was more inwardly focused on the Italian peninsula). While there are obviously evidence and examples for connections and connectivity with the wider Mediterranean that come from northern Italy, these sorts of relationships and connections are arguably a bit more evident in central and southern Italy. Additionally, the conversation around the relationship between central and southern Italy and the Mediterranean is the one we were keen to engage with (and hopefully shift). So, we felt it appropriate to keep the focus there.

2. In your introductory chapter, you consider Mediterranean-wide connectivity and the network approach well suited for analysing and explaining global (here defined as Mediterranean-wide and not truly global) phenomena and local microhistories. Do you see a way by which we could approach regional phenomena?

Good question and we certainly do! Indeed, we would point you towards this volume’s sister for some of those. These include things like the layers of overlapping connectivities (trade, religion, knowledge, craft, movement, etc.), which we can find in early Italy’s burgeoning urban centers. So, they align broadly with the sorts of networks and nexuses of interaction we see at the Mediterranean level, although things obviously work a little differently at different scales. While the other volume focused on the local and regional, this volume consciously sought to develop some of the outward-looking contributions from the conference, and those that worked at a greater/larger scale, to explore the central question of how divisions like “indigenous” and “foreign” relate to one another in a context like pre-Roman Italy (and, indeed, elsewhere).

3. The sister volume had a postscript. Did you consider having one for this volume or did you think that the postscript for the sister volume suffices? In short, how do you see this particular work interacting with its sister volume and how do you see them standing as independent and separate books?

We did consider a postscript for this volume as well, but a number of factors swayed our decision not to have one. Most notably, we felt the contributions to this volume lent themselves, quite nicely, to being grouped around a set of coherent themes/topics. This allowed for the exploration of the central themes of this volume, from different angles, in something that resembled continuous dialogue that didn’t necessarily require an epilogue or postscript to bring things together at the end. Additionally, we felt that the final chapter, by Petter Attema et al. covering the pottery tradition at Timpone della Motta from the Middle Bronze Age through the Archaic Period really did a nice job of bringing things to a close on its own. The concluding section of that chapter (“Adoption, Adaption, and Local Pottery Traditions in the Sibaritide and at Timpone della Motta,” pp. 262–68) plus the “Conclusion” (p. 269), frankly, do a very nice job of hitting many of the key points of the volume. So, in answer to the second half of the question, we certainly see these two volumes working in synergy with each other. They emerged from, and are engaging with, the same conversation. However, they are also two distinct contributions to that conversation, with different foci, and slightly different goals.