Copper Age Settlement and Economy in Le Marche, Central Italy: A Social Perspective

Abstract

This paper attempts to rewrite the story of Copper Age settlement and economy in the Marche region of central Italy with particular reference to social processes, the exploitation of prehistoric resources and the development of social differentiation. During the 4th and 3rd millennia Cal BC, it is suggested that human groups expanded their territories and socio-economic strategies in order to relieve a variety of socioeconomic pressures and demands on traditional Neolithic subsistence resources in the coastal lowlands. An increasing divergence between groups based in the coastal lowlands and groups based further inland is also proposed, and interpreted in terms of the relative marginalization of the former, in contrast to the stability and success of the latter, who had greater access to subsistence resources and longer distance networks of communication and exchange.