Latium - Copper Age

  General Description   The Italian Eneolithic (Eneolitico) dates from the 3rd millennium to the first centuries of the 2nd millennium BCE. It mostly corresponds to the Copper Age (Età del Rame) plus the Early Bronze Age (Prima Età del Bronzo). In Latium, the region of Central Italy that roughly matches modern-day Lazio, the main Copper Age sites include Ponte S. Pietro, Porcareccia and Rinaldone (near the modern-day city of Viterbo), Sgurgola and Casamari (near Frosinone), Castel Malnome and Ardea (near Rome), and Cantalupo Mandela (near Sabina). ^[1] The period is characterized by low density occupation and scattered material finds, mainly grave sites; nothing in the region comparable to the complex contemporary social formations present in Egypt, China, and the Near East.
Population and political organization
None of the above-mentioned sites is considered a ’nucleated settlement’, but they have all yielded useful finds: the Viterbo locations and Sgurgola are small necropolises, while miscellaneous grave goods have been unearthed at the other sites. ^[2] Overall, it seems likely that Latium Copper Age communities were quite small — one estimate posits 100-200 inhabitants each ^[3] — and some estimates for the Early Bronze Age even go so far as to say that each settlement probably only had a few dozen inhabitants. ^[4] The burial data appear to reflect a patriarchal, war-oriented culture: men and women are associated with very different types of grave goods, and male burials are always accompanied by weapons. ^{[2] [5]}

[1]: (Anzidei, Sestieri and De Santis 1985, 102) Anna Paola Anzidei, Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri and Anna De Santis. 1985. Roma e il Lazio dall’età della pietra alla formazione della città. Rome: Quasar.

[2]: (Anzidei, Sestieri and De Santis 1985, 106) Anna Paola Anzidei, Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri and Anna De Santis. 1985. Roma e il Lazio dall’età della pietra alla formazione della città. Rome: Quasar.

[3]: (Whitehouse 1992, 16) Ruth Whitehouse. 1992. Underground Religion: Cult and Culture in Prehistoric Italy. London: Accordia Research Centre, University of London.

[4]: (Cornell 1995, 32-35) Tim Cornell. 1995. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000‒264 BC). London: Routledge.

[5]: (Whitehouse 1992, 21) Ruth Whitehouse. 1992. Underground Religion: Cult and Culture in Prehistoric Italy. London: Accordia Research Centre, University of London.