Different models of urbanisation: early towns in temperate Europe and the ‘proto-urban’ centres of early 1st millennium South Etruria

Pearce, Mark

Abstract

Many scholars have proposed criteria for the identification of urban settlements, but such criteria are often premised on their own views of how and why towns emerged. I critically examine the use of the term ‘proto-urban’, generally employed to describe large population centres in Early Iron Age (‘protohistoric’) Italy. I argue that the label, ‘proto-urban’, is primitivist, teleological and also predicated on a single model of the town, the ancient Greek and Roman town. I argue that a consideration of alternative, non-Mediterranean, models of the town, and in particular the medieval temperate European town, suggests that local, indigenous forms of urbanisation arose in Italy before the diffusion of the east Mediterranean-inspired town, which established itself in central Tyrrhenian Italy and then became the dominant model in the ancient Mediterranean.

Citation

Pearce, M. (2024). Different models of urbanisation: early towns in temperate Europe and the ‘proto-urban’ centres of early 1st millennium South Etruria. In M. Frangipane (Ed.), The ‘city’ across time: Emergence, developments, and social, economic political, cultural and health impact: (Rome, 8-10 June 2022) (95-115). Bardi Edizioni

• Online Publication Date: Apr 11, 2024
• Publication Date: Apr 11, 2024
• Deposit Date: Mar 11, 2024
• Publisher: Bardi Edizioni
• Pages: 95-115
• Series Title: Atti Dei Convegni Lincei
• Series Number: 354
• Series ISSN: 0391-805X
• Book Title: The ‘city’ across time: Emergence, developments, and social, economic political, cultural and health impact: (Rome, 8-10 June 2022)
• ISBN: 9788821812439
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/32453820
• Publisher URL: https://www.bardiedizioni.it/product/the-city-across-time-emergence-developments-and-social-economicpolitical-cultural-and-health-impact/?pwb-page=2
• Contract Date: Nov 17, 2023