State formation and ethnicities from the 8th to the 5th Century BC in the Tiberine valley (Central Italy)

Remarkable cultural differentiations occur in central Italy since the final Bronze Age, but the rise of city-state system in the early Iron Age led to a new mosaic of ethnic identities. At the beginning this phenomenon was mainly restricted to city-states communities, but later it included also huge ethnic linguistic groups. Between the 8th and the 5th century BC, the Tiber Valley represented the area of contact between not less than five historical ethnic groups: the Etruscans the Faliscans, the Umbrians, the Sabinians and the Latins; it provides an opportunity to observe several regional pathways to complexity by comparing the rise and development of each ethnic groups. To achieve this aim, the paper will focus mainly on two types of archaeological evidence: patterns of settlement and territorial organizations as markers of State complexity and ethnic identities. Within such framework ethnicity is considered a purely ideological factor but which is able to influence the evolution of landscape.