The impact of Roman expansion and colonization on ancient Italy in the Republican period. From diffusionism to networks of opportunity

Abstract

Roman colonization and expansionism in the Republican period, and its impact on ancient Italy, are intensely debated in current ancient historical and archaeological research.Traditional, diffusionist views from the late 19 th and especially the 20 th century have recently been heavily criticized, and many socio-economic and cultural developments in ancient Italy (e.g. 'romanization') have been disconnected from Roman conquest and expansionism.Although this development has been extremely important and salutary, in this paper it is argued that we should be careful not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Very recent and ongoing research can be seen as pointing at real Roman impact in various spheres -if in different ways and places than traditionally assumed. Inverting the causal logic between new developments in ancient Italy and Roman colonization, it is argued that Roman expansionism actively targeted hotspots in socio-economic and cultural networks of special interest in ancient Italy. The privileged status of colonial communities then energized and redrew existing constellations, thus using, but also impacting on pre-existing configurations. Such a view stimulates us to rethink the primary incentives behind Roman colonization, and to investigate more intricate patterns of Roman agency. Roman colonizing movements intensified and changed in character, however, after the Latin War (338 BC), when Rome also formally established her dominance (Cornell 1989b;Cornell 1989a; Cornell 1995, 301-304; Oakley 1997, 342-344). The list of colonies sent out by Rome from that moment onwards is impressive (see Fig. 1 and 2), with 33 colonies being founded within the little over a century until the Second Punic War. This period has been described as the "golden age" of colonization by one of the most eminent It is useful to briefly discuss these supposed incentives, because our interpretation of the primary motivations for establishing colonies affects the ways and extent to which the colonies potentially impacted on local Italic communities. Analogously, it is also useful for understanding the debate on Roman colonization in historiographical terms, since, as will be 1969;Coarelli 1988;de Cazanove 2005). The image of colonies as strategic strongholds, placed where they are and in the way they are for military purposes (Cicero's "bulwarks of 8 empire:" propugnacula imperii; Leg. Agr. 2.23.73, or Livy's claustra; e.g. Liv. 6.9.4) is therefore paramount in scholarship on the subject (esp. Salmon 1936Salmon , 1955Salmon and 1969 recently e.g. Broadhead 2007 andSisani 2007). It is almost universally accepted as a primary motivation for colonization in the mid-Republican period, and discussion has rather focused

Emerging Empires and Opportunistic Land-Use Legacies: Testing a New Model on Rome's Conquest and Colonization Through Archaeological Survey Data in the Territories of Cosa and Tarraco

“…the Venusia hinterland in Casarotto, Pelgrom, Stek, 2019) established historical land-use and settlement patterns that influenced the trajectories of socio-ecological landscapes during the conquest and colonial periods. This paper put forward the possibility that Iron-Age and pre-Roman land-use legacies and settlement systems, such as villages and their surrounding (engineered and/or farmed) landscapes, probably served as key anchors in the development of subsequent colonial period settlement processes (for the general idea of Roman colonization targeting preexisting economic and cultural hotspots, see Stek, 2017;e.g. sanctuaries: Stek and Burgers, 2015).…”