Builders of walls in Bronze Age southern Italy: the case of Coppa Nevigata

Bronze Age fortified settlements in the central Mediterranean have been the focus of extensive research and wide international debate. Central to these discussions is the question of the social organisation of labour underpinning the construction of defensive structures, which clearly required substantial collective effort, careful planning, and forms of coordination. A widely debated topic in this context concerns the degree of internal hierarchisation within these communities and the nature of their political organisation at a territorial scale. The long-lived Bronze Age fortified settlement of Coppa Nevigata, located on the Adriatic coast of northern Apulia and extensively excavated, provides a key diachronic case study for exploring long-term transformations in social and political organisation. Drawing on the results of ongoing excavations, revised demographic estimates, and new calculations of the workforce required for the construction of the defensive lines, this paper aims at reassessing the relationship between the building of defensive architecture, community organisation, and political structures.