^^® A. Peatfield, 'After the 'Big Bang' - what? or Minoan symbols and shrines beyond the palatial collapse' in Placing the Gods 23. This is strongly disputed by Cherry who states that 'attempts to push back the history of peak sanctuaries into the pre-palatial period ... involve stretching the defining criteria to an unacceptable degree' ('Polities and palaces', in Peer Polity Interaction 19-45).
poor to enable us to distinguish separate phases of usage before the Roman conquest. The next verifiable development in the topography of Umbrian religious practice is the erection of sacred buildings in settlement sites (positioned on valley bottoms and smaller hills) from the fourth century BC onwards. Nevertheless I would argue that the actual creation of archaic rural sanctuaries in Umbria is given substantial importance by the Minoan evidence, even if we cannot link it explicitly to centralised states. Instead, their appearance is a first symptom of the process that will lead to such states on Crete. For Peatfield they represent the 'religious dimension to this growth of a larger community identity', as
small independent settlements of the Prepalatial period gave way, in the Palatial period, to larger regions of economically and politically interactive settlements focused on the palatial and urban centres.^^°
The beginning of the movement towards more complex societies, which we know from hindsight must have occurred in Umbria as well as in Crete, is significant: the development of the state in the classical world was a long, gradual process. Stoddart and Whitley's minimising of this evidence depends on a very narrow definition of state formation, on which they do not elaborate. In fact, we might suspect that there is a hidden agenda here. Their work is a part of a project that has centred around survey archaeology conducted in the valley below Gubbio; this turned up little material from the Archaic period or the third and second centuries BC. From these results Stoddart surmises that Gubbio was a 'modest population centre ... that cannot be called a s t a t e ' . A n y t h i n g that conflicts with this image causes obvious difficulties.^^^
5. CO N C LU SIO N
Two distinctive features of Umbria in the period from c. 1,000 to 300 BC stand out in comparison with others areas of Italy at this time. Firstly, there is an extraordinarily dense network of cult sites scattered across the landscape, many of them with very large numbers of votives - overwhelmingly the small bronze figurines made in this region. If Colonna's dating of these figurines is correct, then it would appear that there was a veritable explosion of this type of activity in the fifth century BC. Although ritual behaviour in the preceding period is very obscure, the new evidence strongly suggests
^ Peatfield, 'Minoan peak sanctuaries' 125. Stoddart, Territory, Time and State 177.
^ The significance of the Iguvine Tables and the locally produced coinage of the third century BC are similarly down-played.
that important changes were occurring at this time. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions about the users of these sanctuaries or the cult activity that took place there: a few directions have been explored above.
The second distinctive feature of this era to which I would like to draw attention is the density of individual settlements in this region. It is clear that at least some of them are occupied from the Final Bronze Age. At at least one of these, Iguvium, this corresponded to the abandonment of the nearest hillforts. In other more mountainous areas, such as those around modern Colfiorito and Monteleone di Spoleto, settlement systems incorporating hillforts seem just to be developing. By the definition proposed in the first chapter, urbanisation can only be said to be beginning when the settlement centres take on new functions, for example as a fortified point (Otricoli, Bettona, Amelia and possibly Spoleto) or as a cult place (Otricoli, Todi, Spoleto, Foligno, Bevagna, Am a and perhaps Gubbio). All of these centres are in the lowland areas of the sub- Appennine zone. This evidence first appears in the fifth century; in the fourth century several monumental buildings, probably temples, are erected at Todi, Arna and Bevagna. The limited excavation of these centres and their cemeteries makes it difficult even to estimate their size: the Accaierie cemetery at Terni is probably the largest of those known, with several thousand tombs, but this may not actually relate to the settlement on the site of Roman Interamna. The areas enclosed by the fortifications at Otricoli, Bettona and probably Amelia are equivalent only to the smallest centres in Faliscan and Etruscan areas.^^^
Even the stabilising of populations on a particular site from an early date is of some importance. It would allow the opportunity for institutions, a central authority and group definition to develop - these are only verifiable from the time of the conquest, with the greater detail of written sources, both literary or epigraphic, but surely begin to appear before. One aspect of the changes to a community that can be documented with archaeological evidence is the rise of an aristocracy.^^^ Burials full of prestige items reach a peak in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. The most elaborate contain valuable imported goods such as Greek figurative pottery and Etruscan bronzes, and objects expressing aristocratic status and power, such as chariots and weaponry. The main areas affected by these developments seem to be those within easy reach of Etruria, such as Todi and Amelia, or the centres in the Appennine areas, such as Colfiorito and Monteleone. The aristocrats of the latter were probably able to monitor and control
^ Fontaine, Citiés 65 (Otricoli's encloses 3 ha).
movement through their areas using complex networks of hillforts, whose creation they presumably initiated. The wealth they could accrue through their organisation of these societies is visible in the cemetery at Colfiorito; some also ended up in the sanctuary at the centre of the territory here. The system was probably no less complex or wealthy than that of the lowlands - it represents instead a chronologically parallel adaptation to a different enviroment. It perhaps declined from the fourth century as the long distance trade routes on which it depended, such as that from Volsinii to Picenum through Colfiorito, were interrupted.
By the time of the Roman conquest, many of the lowland centres and the territorial upland communities had become politically organised into states. The new imposition of Roman control must have prevented the stronger states from (further) agglomerating their territory at the expense of the weaker. The result was the dense pattern of very small municipia known from the period after the Social War.
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