Simonetta Menchelli

Rural, Urban and Suburban Communities and their economic Interconnectivity in coastal North Etruria (2nd century BC - 2nd Century AD)

In coastal north Etruria (Luni, Lucca, Pisa, Volterra and their territories; Fig. 1) the authors of this chapter are currently conducting an intensive ‘total archaeology’ research project2 into long-term developments from the Late Bronze Age to the early medieval period, with a focus on the late Etruscan, early/middle Roman and late Roman periods.3 The work is still in progress; this chapter presents some results, a few tesserae of a larger mosaic. In particular, it zooms in on the Pisa-Volterra district and on the impact of the Roman conquest on regional economic developments from the 3rd century BC onwards. More precisely, it attempts to establish the nature, the socio-economic effects and the dynamics of cultural change of this process in its urban and wider territorial context, presenting the processed data in chronological order.