The rise of the state in Ancient Italy went hand in hand with an increase in infrastructural power, i.e., settlement centralization and urbanization. The paper discusses theoretical challenges and introduces a modeling approach to a case study, one of the earliest cities in Southern Italy, Pontecagnano, with the aim of understanding the community dynamics at the time of the earliest urbanization (ca. 900-600 BC). The model is a two-mode model that derives from social network analysis, an approach that has been fruitfully adapted to archaeological research. The model is applied to detect trends in burial contexts from the community involved. Burial was, at that time, in the region, a key instrument in the creation of memory and display of status and thus for building and consolidating state power. The analytical network model is able to detect the dynamics in the community over time very well: network Cohesion is expanding and contracting, and points to the existence of tension and a tight control of funerary behavior. The study of Centrality of selected nodes provides a good understanding of the strategies in terms of the circulation of key resources. The latter is particularly significant for studying urbanization because the appropriation of resources was not possible without centralization and the development of infrastructure, as well as an ideology. Based on the study of selected resources, it is suggested that an increase in crop storage has played a particular role in the development of state power and the urbanization process at Pontecagnano. In due course, the paper also addresses methodological challenges of working with fragmented datasets when applying models to study the past.
Connectivities are the focus of a lot of current Ancient World research. Either indirectly, as constituting one of many factors involving socio-cultural transformations with a heavy spatial impact, such as urbanisation processes, or directly, being at the very heart of transformative processes detectable in the archaeological record, such as globalisation, connectivity has become a new framework with which to approach the past. The advantage of connectivity as a concept is that it is broad, neutral and that it stimulates cross-cultural comparison.
There are many positives to take away from this volume, but conceptual vagueness is often a hindrance. Having said that, the idea of the volume and indeed the series is to be commended with its multiple perspectives and wide-ranging thematic treatments.
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