PATTERNS OF SETTLEM EN T

Two basic models of settlement patterns are offered by previous work on the regions of Italy that we can use to categorise the situation in Umbria before the Roman conquest:

pagus and vicus settlement, and the city-state or polis system.

(a) Pag! and vie!

The most developed exposition of the model of pagus and vicus settlement is in the work of La Regina on the areas of the central Appennines, and especially Samnium, the best known part of this r e g i o n . T h e archaeological records for this area show a pattern of settlement based around sanctuaries, hillforts (sometimes called castella or, confusingly,

oppida) and villages (often called vici). These separated establishments are seen as performing a variety of functions for the inhabitants, functions which a city would perform in a more urbanised area."^ La Regina has also employed epigraphic evidence from the region to show how it was institutionally different from urbanised areas, with the touta

^ La Regina, 'Note sulla formazione dei centri urbani in area sabellica', in La città etrusca e itaiica preromana (Bologna, 1970) 191-207; Introduzione b. Dalle guerre sannitiche alia romanizzazione' in Sannio. Pentri e Frentani dal VI al I sec. a. C. Exhibition Catalogue (Rome, 1980) 29-42, and other works.

This topic is dealt with in ch. 1, section 3 (b). We should also note that vici are known largely from the evidence of cemeteries.

here perhaps being equivalent to the whole ethnic group, the nomen, rather than a division of it/®

The terminology of pagus and vicus applied to this archaeological picture is of course Latin and not the native Oscan actually spoken in this region. Vicus is a standard term in late Republican Latin for a small nucleated settlement; pagus is not used in late Republican legislative documents, but in other examples of Latin epigraphy refers to local territorial divisions of a 'tribe', and as such must be a Latinisation of (presumably) a variety of local institutions.'^® These terms have become widely used in Italian archaeological writing as 'pagano-vicano' or its variants. The problem with this phrase is that this is not usually fully defined, and derives from Latin terms that refer to a wide range of (probably different) situations. There is also some confusion about how this type of settlement relates to an urban 'system'. Tribal states, of which pagi formed a part, are normally seen as the predecessors of city-states,®° but some scholars see

pagi as characteristic of an intermediate stage between tribes and cities.®^ In fact the system in its fully developed form can only be documented in Samnium for the period from the fourth century onwards, and I have argued in the first chapter that if anything the polis system, for which we have evidence at a much earlier date, should probably be seen as a parallel development to tribal states (whether in Greece or Italy) rather than their 'natural' successors.

In essence I think that the archaeological picture built up by La Regina and others working on the mountainous areas of central Italy is one that can be usefully applied as a model to other areas including, as we shall see, that of upland Umbria. The terms

pagus and vicus, however, should be used with caution (and properly defined), especially when there is so little justification for their use in the epigraphy of Umbria.®^

The most obvious traces of this type of settlement would seem to be hillforts. Considerable numbers of them have been identified throughout the mountainous areas of Umbria by topographical study - the investigation of likely sites through the study of the landscape pattern, combined with observation on the ground - allied with aerial

See p. 46 above.

^ M. Frederiksen, 'Changes in the patterns of settlement', in Hellenismus in Mittelitalien

343. This is further complicated by the new meaning, as a division of the territory of a town, that pagus adopted in the late Republic and early Empire.

Frederiksen, 'Patterns of settlement' 343. Bonomi Ponzi, 'Dorsale appenninica' 139.

“ The term pagus is attested at Cesi (0. Buettner, 'L'abitato umbro di Cesi e il santuario di S. Erasmo', AFLP 25 (1987-1988) 55, perhaps relating to Carsulae); a tr(ibunus) (GIL P 2106=ILLRP 668) from the territory of Spoleto was in the opinion of Degrassi (ILLRP 2 p. 117) a magistrate of a pagus or vicus.

photography.^^ This comparatively recent work has identified a dense network in three main areas of Umbria: the upland regions centering around the plateau of Colfiorito, the Valnerina (the valley of the Nera river) and the Conca Eugubina (the basin of Gubbio).®'* Unpublished work has also identified these structures in the territory of Camerino on the Adriatic side of the Appennines, the Monti Martani overlooking the Valle Umbra and the territory of Amelia in the south-east of the region.®® Research has focused on these mountainous areas as they have been subject to little environmental change and so preserve traces of hillforts that are no longer evident in more accessible zones.

In terms of structure, hillforts are usually made up of a ditch (four to five m wide in the zone of Colfiorito) and a bank of earth or stone (up to four m high) around the highest points in the landscape (generally 600-1,200 m and most commonly 800-1,000 m). The stone sometimes shows evidence of shaping so as to be fitted together rather than simply being piled up, but the action of weathering often makes such features undiscernible. The area enclosed is usually restricted, although some of the largest circuits reach 1,300 m in length.®® Material indicating habitation is frequently found on the surface of these sites, including tiles and coarse ware (basic undecorated pottery for common use). At sites around Colfiorito this material could be dated only imprecisely to the pre-Roman period.®^

Cemeteries are more useful in this respect.®® Excavations at Monteleone di Spoleto and Colfiorito show that many hillforts have corresponding cemeteries at the base of the mountain they occupy. Judging by their cemeteries, and their positions, M. Orve near Colfiorito and Colie del Capitano near Monteleone di Spoleto were probably the most important hillforts within their territorial areas.®® Other more minor hillforts such

Topographical study: M. Matteini Chiari, ’La ricognizione per un'ipotesi di definizione territoriale: il territorio eugubino in età preromana', AFLP 17 (1979-1980) 211-22; Bonomi Ponzi, 'Dorsale appenninica' 137-142; Bonomi Ponzi, 'Topographic survey'. Aerial photography: G. Schmiedt, 'Contributo della foto-interpretazione alia conoscenza della rete stradale dell'Umbria nell'alto medioevo', in Atti III convegno di Studi Umbri (Gubbio, 1965) 177-

210.

See Figure 3, taken from Bonomi Ponzi, Dorsale appenninica' 141; for the territory of Gubbio see Matteini Chiari, 'La ricognizione per un'ipotesi di definizione territoriale: il territorio eugubino in età preromana' 211-22.

Bonomi Ponzi, 'Gli Umbri: territorio, culture e société', in Antichità dallVmbria a Budapest 42.

For instance, M. Orve near Colfiorito: Bonomi Ponzi, 'Topographic survey' 212. Bonomi Ponzi, 'Topographic survey' 207.

For details of these see below under individual sites.

Hillforts seem often to be organised in groups in which minor centres gravitate around one more complex central site. These latter tend to be on the highest of a series of peaks and may have more than one circuit of walling (for example M. Orve) and traces of buildings (for example at Col di Mori near Gualdo Tadino, M. Orve) (Matteini Chiari, 'La ricognizione per un'ipotesi di definizione territoriale: il territorio eugubino in età preromana' 219). This

as M. di Franca and M. T relia in the zone of Colfiorito had correspondingly less rich cemeteries in the valley below.®° The presence of such cemeteries might suggest that hillforts were permanently occupied centres and not just fortified places of refuge or structures in summer pastures associated with transhumance. But these cemeteries might also relate to villages (which have mostly left no permanent trace) and which would also presumably be positioned near hillforts for refuge. And in fact at Colfiorito hut foundations have been found through archaeological investigation under the Roman

municipium of Plestia and as a result of agricultural work in several areas close by.®^ In the regions in which they have been identified, the function of hillforts seems to be predominantly defensive. They are usually sited in relation to communication routes, often being placed in pairs either side of a valley or other itinerary. In addition they are usually linked visually with each other. Another possible factor in their position might be the protection of territorial borders, which might explain the line of hillforts on the mountain ridge to the south-west of the Colfiorito plateau.®^ This sort of function is facilitated by mountainous terrain. In the area of Colfiorito the upland plateau is enclosed on all sides by mountains through which there are only narrow gaps for access. Such gaps are very easy to control.

In the sub-Appennine parts of Umbria the terrain is much more open, with the major ranges generally isolated rather than interlocking, and so these areas seem much less suited to such a system of control and defence. In addition although many hillforts have been identified outside the Appennine zone, we have no clear chronology for them (unlike the situation around Monteleone and Colfiorito) because the corresponding cemeteries are not known. Only one of these hillforts in the sub-Appennine zones, M. Ansciano near Gubbio, has itself been properly excavated and published.®® The results show it was inhabited in the Bronze Age but then abandoned around 950 BC when the 'whole population collected on the slopes below the mountains of M. Ingino and M.

centralisation around one particular point seems similar in some ways to that occurring around lowland sites: the definition of one point as a 'central place' does not seem to distinguish this system from 'urban' ones.

®° Bonomi Ponzi, 'Topographic survey' 212.

®^ Antichità dail'Umbria in Vaticano 55: Bonomi Ponzi assumes that these are traces of several small villages that were abandoned in favour of the hillforts in the sixth century BC (probably because this is when the first cemetery evidence appears below them) but offers no evidence for the date of the huts.

®^ Schmiedt, 'Contribute della foto-interpretazione alia conoscenza della rete stradale dell'Umbria nell'alto medioevo' 177-210, thinks this line may have the purpose of controlling transhumance movements from the Valle Umbra.

Ansciano’ (where the Roman town was sited).®'* The other supposedly integral part of the pagus and vicus settlement pattern, places of cult, are only testified in Umbria by evidence from (at the earliest) the late sixth century. The recent excavations at Gubbio have shown that the hilltop fortifications here were re-occupied for cult purposes some

three centuries after the end of their use for habitation.®® In fact it is only at Colfiorito, whose exceptional geographical position has been stressed above, that we can document the use of a cult site in the same period as a network of hillforts. The chronological pattern at Gubbio is surely more likely to be representative of the sub- Appennine parts of Umbria, where (as we shall see) many of the later town sites began to be occupied in the first few centuries of the first millennium BC, than the pattern visible at Colfiorito.

(i) Colfiorito (Plestia)®®

Around the plateau of Colfiorito, extensive, if not systematic, surveys and excavations have over the last 35 years identified a pattern of settlement with hillforts, villages and sanctuaries that seems to conform closely to the model of settlement outlined above.®^ The plateau lies on the modern border between Umbria and the Marche, at a height of 750 m. It is surrounded by very high peaks of between 800 and 1100 m. It has probably always constituted an important through route to Picenum and the Adriatic from the Valle Umbra.®® The plain is also crossed by other paths running along the Appennine chain to Nocera Umbra and Gualdo Tadino in one direction and Monteleone, Norcia and Sabine and Samnite territory to the south. Although part of the plateau was covered by a lake, which was not drained until the fifteenth century, it must also have provided important summer pastures for transhuming flocks. As befitting its geographical position, the culture that developed here shows a mixture of influences. Three small inscriptions found in the 1960s on the site of a sanctuary have been taken to be Umbrian.®® The major necropolis found here has been ascribed to the Picene culture, but also shows strong Latial/Sabine influences for the early period (ninth to seventh

®'* Territory, Time and State 113. The mountain top sites were reoccupied for cult purposes in the sixth to third centuries BC.

®® This evidence examined further in section (b) (x) below.

®® Not marked on Map 1 (between Fulginiae and Camerinum); no. 27 on Map 4. ®^ For survey see n. 53 above.

®® For trade between Etruria and Picenum, see Lollini in Popoli e Civiltà dell'ltalia antica 5 160-1.

U. Ciotti, 'Nuove conoscenze sui culti dell'Umbria antica', in I problemi di stona e archeologia deilVmbria (Perugia, 1964) 99ff., 100; P. Poccetti, Nuovi document! italici a complemento del Manuale di E. Vetter (Pisa, 1979) no. 2.

century) and Etruscan influences for the period from the sixth to the third century B C /° 248 tombs in all have been found in excavations since 1962 at the north-western foot of M. Orve/^ It seems probable that the corresponding settlement was on top of this mountain, where an encircling wall and traces of building have been discerned/^

The necropolis shows four different chronological phases. In the first, from the ninth to the seventh century BC, the locally produced tomb furnishings are extremely basic, usually consisting of one impasto vase and a few clothing-related objects, such as fibulae. The material, culturally close to that found in contemporary burials at Terni and in Latium, suggests that the society was not strongly stratified. In the second phase, during the seventh century BC, the burials have new types of furnishing, such as iron weapons and bronze dishes. The third phase, from the sixth to the first half of the fourth century sees an increase in the number of tombs, and in the overall quantity and quality of grave goods. Some graves contain bronze equipment for dining, characteristic aristocratic accoutrements in the archaic Mediterranean world, imported Greek red and black figure vases, and large quantities of impasto pottery.^^ The concentration of the highest quality furnishings in some of the graves seems to show the increasing stratification of the society through the rise of an aristocratic class. The last phase of the Colfiorito cemetery, from the second half of the fourth century to the end of the third century BC, sees a decline in the quality of the grave goods. If this reflects the wealth of the community, rather than a change in funerary custom, it could be the result of the extension of Roman power into this area of central Italy and the interruption of the trade routes which this community controlled. The burials cease in this cemetery in the third century BC; the minor cemeteries found in the surrounding territory are generally datable from the late sixth to the fourth century BC.^^ The ending of burials can probably be linked to the creation of the Roman centre (later a municipium) of Plestia near to the sanctuary site (and perhaps on the shores of the lake).^®

Guida Laterza 104.

See Bonomi Ponzi, 'Dorsale appenninica’ 137-142; Bonomi Ponzi, 'Cultura e société del territorio plestino in età protostorica', in Antichità dallVmbria in Vaticano 54-5 and in Antichità dairUmbria a Budapest 76-88. I have not seen L. Bonomi Ponzi, La necropoli plestina di Colfiorito di Foligno ('Collana di studi di storia e archeologia dell'Umbria antica' 2).

Discussed above.

E.g. Tomb 6, published in Antichità dail'Umbria a Budapest 76. The bronze material