Inner Sabina before Rome: Landscape, Settlement, and Society in the Central Apennines

For centuries, the mountain regions of central Italy have occupied a marginal place in historical narratives of pre-Roman Italy, often portrayed as peripheral, isolated, or resistant to change. This volume challenges that view through a comprehensive archaeological reconstruction of the inner Sabina, the upland territory mostly straddling the modern regions of Lazio and Umbria, geographically framed by the river Nera, the Sibillini mountains, the Velino valley, and the Reatini range, and centred in the Roman period on the town of Nursia (modern Norcia).

Focusing on the first millennium BC up to the Roman conquest traditionally associated with the campaign of Manius Curius Dentatus in 290 BC, the book explores how local communities structured their territories, organised mobility, exploited resources, and negotiated social relationships across a demanding mountain environment. Combining landscape archaeology, settlement analysis, and GIS-based spatial modelling, it reconstructs patterns of settlement, connectivity, and land use in order to offer a fundamentally new picture of this region.

Rather than a marginal or static world, the inner Sabina emerges as a dynamic landscape shaped by communities capable of developing complex territorial strategies and forms of social organisation. By situating this case study within wider debates on ancient landscapes and human–environment relationships, the volume offers a broader contribution to the archaeology of mountain societies and pre-Roman Italy.

Publisher: University of Groningen Press
Broerstraat 4 9712 CP Groningen

The original printed version of Inner Sabina before Rome: Landscape, Settlement, and Society in the Central Apennines, Papers of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, 75, ISBN: 978-88-5491-744-6 can be ordered from: Edizioni Quasar and regular bookstores.