FORTIFIED SETTLEMENTS AS COLLECTORS OF PEOPLE AND RESOURCES: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-01-05

This paper focuses on the fortified settlements of the Northern Po plain during the Bronze Age. These settlements are traditionally considered the poles of the Middle and Late Bronze Age plain landscape, and probably they ruled the social and economic dynamics of their surrounding territories. However, these considerations about the historical role of the fortified settlements are mostly based on qualitative analysis, so this kind of research suffers of a lack in the explanation of how these enclosed villages managed people and resources. This paper try to answer to this question using a quantitative approach, looking at the demography, at the manpower needed to realize ditches, ramparts and hydraulic infrastructures, and estimating how much food resources was necessary to sustain people involved in a fortified settlement life cycle. For first, the research focuses on how many people lived inside the settlements, using a method based on the ratio between housing and free spaces. Then, an estimate of the number of labourers needed to realize defensive and canalization structures has been obtained referring to the nineteenth century literature about the earthworks and to the texts of soviet archaeologists about manpower. This analysis shows that, in many cases, the manpower needed to build the perimeter infrastructures was higher than the average number of people who lived in the fortified settlement. Finally, it has been calculated how much food was needed to sustain people in everyday life and during the realization of infrastructures: this evaluation shows that a surplus of food resources was necessary to sustain manpower during infrastructures works. Through this quantitative analysis, it is possible to explain how the adjacent communities were involved in the fortified villages dynamics, and how the enclosed settlements managed food and water resources.


Author(s): Vicenzutto, David (Università degli Studi di Padova, Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali: Archeologia, Storia dell‘Arte, del Cinema e della Musica)