The Adriatic coast from the Po River mouth and the Apennine border during the Bronze Age: environment, resources and settlement pattern

Abstract

The paper examines the environmental and geographical characters of Romagna during the Bronze Age as a starting point to evaluate resources available to ancient communities. A further goal is the identification of the peculiarities of a territory that participated in the demographic expansion in northern Italy. After a premise in which the diversity of the state of research and documentation of the eastern region are discussed, the characteristics of the coast and the rivers that have constituted an element of gravitation for the inhabited areas are also examined. The analysis of a selection of archaeological finds, in particular the material culture, allows us to highlight the role of the communities settled in the coastal region and inland up to the Emilian area. The participation of ancient communities of eastern region that was already active in the Early Bronze Age indicates a significant component that involves the trans-Apennine area and persisted with different aspects in the subsequent phases of the Middle Bronze and Recent Bronze Age, up to the phenomenon of resilience of the settlement pattern of the region in the final Bronze Age.