Dai campi… alle città. Tecniche di Land Evaluation per riscoprire l’antico agire delle prime comunità urbane.

This paper illustrates the theoretical reflection “agro-economistic” and consequent investigation technique through which to search the landscape for traces of those socio-economic (and thus also exquisitely political) dynamics that influenced the ancient actions of human communities. The approach involves the use of Land Evaluation (FAO) techniques within a GIS platform to obtain a model of the ancient landscape, showing the degrees of suitability of the various areas for agro-silvo-pastoral use. In this way, it is possible to simulate the economic behaviour of communities. By identifying territories specialised productions, settlements capable of producing a food surplus or, on the contrary, sites that were not “self-sufficient”, the socio-political models were articulated and put to the test. In this way, it is possible to define an inter-site dimension made up of exchange networks, mutualistic relations, but also competitive and hierarchical relationships between the various settlements. With demographic analysis, it was also possible to investigate the phenomena occurring in the groups from the point of view of the people involved, thus enriching the proposed historical reconstructions. As demonstrated by the case study of Ager Caeretanus between the Final Bronze and Early Iron Age.