Economic potential

Any study of settlement needs to take into account what resources the community had available, and how they made use of them. It is clear that no group will settle in a landscape which does not provide the minimum resources for survival, though technology and human ingenuity play an important part in guaranteeing that few landscapes fail to fulfil this. However, the more stable and permanent the form of settlement and the bonds within the landscape (as in country/town relationships), the more important landscape resources will be for settlement continuity and the development of socio-economic patterns. A study that takes into account the resources known to and exploited by a community will put into perspective the depth of their achievement, showing their technological or cultural adaptation to the landscape.

Resources in South Etruria

The landscape of South Etruria is a very varied yet stable one. Varied too are its natural resources: good agricultural land appears close to natural grazing land; altitude variability within a short geographical range ensures all-year pasture availability and there are also indications of more extensive woodland coverage in the past (see Chapter 4 above) with possibilities for hunting and fruit and wood gathering. The area is, furthermore, favoured by a hydrographic system which ensures water supply and ease of communication between coast and inland, and a series of volcanic lakes also guarantees water supply to some of the inland regions. Possible stress areas, susceptible to flooding.

can be found along some of the low-lying river valleys and areas of the coastal strip, but in general the topographic and environmental configuration of the area is stable and not subject to extreme climatic pressures. In terms of resources, both agriculture and stock- breeding are possible within short ranges; trade is facilitated by communication ease along river valleys, and there are no considerable altitudes that have to be negotiated; the area is also rich in minerals.

Much has been made of the metal resources of Etruria (see for instance Bietti Sestieri 1981b and the other papers in the Convegno Etruria Mineraria): in the area of our study these are concentrated in the Monti della Tolfa (copper, lead, iron, zinc, and other metallic minerals) and around the Monte Amiata (iron and other metallic minerals), with isolated iron ores on the coastal strip south of Cerveteri and between the Fiora and the Marta rivers. Outside the area, to the north, the greater concentration of mineral and metal resources is found in the Colline Metallifere in Tuscany (rich in copper, tin, zinc, lead, iron and other metals). However, there are not, as yet, clear indications of what was being exploited in the late stages of the Bronze Age, or whether bronze for the region was produced locally or had to be imported. That at least the copper ores were known and worked already during the Copper Age can be argued from the relative concentration of finds around the metal ores, a pattern also found in the Early Bronze Age (Barker 1981: 172-173). It has been pointed out that since copper was being mined, the area would have been self-sufficient for its bronze needs if the tin ores were also under exploitation during the Bronze Age (Bietti Sestieri 1984: 105). Even though at present it is still not possible to clarify this important issue, the scarcity of finds and their local distribution suggests that during the Middle, and perhaps the Late Bronze Age, mining remained a locally controlled activity without great repercussions for other areas (Barker 1981: 196; Bietti Sestieri 1981b: 250-251).

A last point which deserves noting is that South Etruria’s varied landscape allows for economic diversification within relatively short geographical ranges. The importance of this fact lies in that it favours settlement stability and continuity, by providing a broad subsistence base. The region’s scope for economic diversity, together with its heterogeneous topographic configuration also means that if settlement dislocation becomes

necessary because of climatic or social reasons (site becoming too small, or environmentally uninhabitable), economic territories can continue to be exploited, by means of short range settlement dislocation: this gives economic activities a stability which would be impossible if new locations for settlement implied different exploitation territories. It is in its variety that South Etruria finds precisely one of its greatest assets for human occupation and expansion of activities.

Resources in Western Veneto

If South Etruria’s landscape has been described as stable and varied, that of Bronze Age Western Veneto could be typified as unstable and more homogeneous. In contrast with South Etruria, where geographical zones are interspersed, in Western Veneto clear environmental zonation exists: the mountainous range of the Alps, the pre-Alps and Alpine valleys, the foot-hills and the river plain. All these zones offered uniform environments and different resources to the human groups which inhabited them. The fertile alluvial plain of the Po is a potentially rich area for agricultural production. The assumption has been that during the Bronze Age agricultural activity (and productivity) was impaired by the marsh conditions that dominated much of the area until artificial drainage took place last century. Recent research has discovered, however, the existence of irrigation channels connected to the site of Stanghelle and dated from pottery material to the Middle-Late Bronze Age (Balista, forthcoming). This would suggest that by then the settlements in the plain had achieved a considerable degree of adaptation to landscape conditions, which allowed them to exploit the heavy clayey but very fertile alluvial soils of the plain better. Still, initially Bronze Age settlements tended to concentrate on the lighter soils of the foothill area and the upper plain, where access to pastures is also much easier. In the region as a whole there are winter and summer pastures, which would have been available to any one group by means of short distance transhumance between the lower plain and the hills, or between the hills and the Alps. There is, in fact, some palaeobotanic evidence for seasonal pastoral movements in Veneto already from the Early Bronze Age (see Migliavacca 1985 & 1990). In historic times the plain’s abundance of water resources favoured its use as pasture land, a situation probably encountered also in prehistory. The mountainous areas and the more extensive wood cover of the plain during the Bronze Age provided wood and hunting resources.

The intercommunicability of the region is favoured by two major watercourses, the Po and the Adige, and their tributaries. The Po’s navigability ensures sea trade can penetrate well into the Peninsula. The area is also a natural route for traffic from or towards the Alps (there are several passes along the Venetian Alps), and is, therefore, potentially attractive to trade and ideas exchange. However, as seen in Chapter 4, it is in an environmental fringe zone, and unsettled environmental and hydrographic conditions will affect communication routes, roads and trade within and among the different ecozones.

In terms of raw materials, the metal resources of Western Veneto concentrate in the Alps: in Trentino there are signs of metallurgical activity at Riparo Gaban (smelting ovens and metal scraps), already in the Copper Age levels (Peroni 1989: 172). Early Bronze Age sites along the Adige valley -Romagnano, La Vela-, and the sites of Valsugana and Montesei di Serso have revealed similar signs (Peroni 1989: 172). It is in fact from Trentino that most of the metal resources must have come to Western Veneto. Signs of metallurgical activity are relatively abundant: bellows, moulds and crucibles from Ledro; casting droplets from Monte Covolo (Barfield 1994: 133); in Laghetti di Vela the remains of a smelting oven for extracting copper from chalcopyrite were found (Peroni 1989: 172); and there is evidence for the mining and smelting of chalcopyrite to obtain copper in Montesei di Serso and Tezze di Lusema in the Late Bronze Age (Bianchin Citton 1984: 641). The rich bronze tradition of centres like Peschiera, or Frattesina later on, suggests that bronze was readily available in the region. Copper ores can be found in the area of Schio-Recoaro (De Guio in Fogolari et a l 1987: 101) and although there is no direct evidence that these were under exploitation during the Bronze Age, the finds of crucibles in sites there - Piovene and Magrè - (Balista et a l 1982: 128), could be taken as indirect evidence that they were.

Western Veneto could be described as a high yield-high risk zone: agriculture and pastoralism find perfect territories for all-year round exploitation; the area’s trading assets are high, with good communication routes and a favourable geographic position; metallurgy is guaranteed by the mining resources in the Alps. Yet all these assets can become valueless if environmental conditions are not favourable. In contrast with Etruria,

and as shown in Chapter 4, a small climatic fluctuation can cause a disproportionate response in the environment and affect all the above activities. The region’s topographical configuration in zones does not permit short range settlement dislocation if the cause behind it is environmental pressure: as such, this implies the exploitation of new territories every time climatic conditions necessitate settlement dislocation.

2. Subsistence basis