- Mariassunta Cuozzo –
the current state of its variegated aspects is diffi cult to defi ne: for the longest part of their
history, many communities of ancient Campania appear to be “open societies,” cultural
composites so as to evoke in recent years the anthropological defi nitions of “cultures metisses”
or hybridization (Amselle 1990; 2010; D’Agostino-Cerchiai 2004; Van Dommelen 1997;
2006; Cuozzo 2012) or the theory of the “Middle Ground” (Malkin 2002).
The Etruscan presence in Campania in the First Iron Age – traditionally labeled as
the so-called fi rst “Etruscanization” (etruschizzazione) – rather than indicating a huge
displacement of peoples and the enslaving or forced acculturation of the local populations,
should instead probably be considered a form of cultural hegemony brought about by
groups of southern Etruscans who enjoyed an advanced socio-economic and cultural level.
This enabled them to stimulate, through a widespread integration of indigenous people,
a process of territorial re-organization and a concentration of settlement in a proto-urban
pattern (Cerchiai 2010).
The population of Campania during the Iron Age is usually subdivided into several
principal cultural districts. Traditionally indigenous groups, characterized by their
funerary ritual of inhumation, occupy the northern coastal area and internal southern
Campania: the horizon of the fossa-tombs comprises pre-Hellenic Cumae and similar sites
on the island of Ischia, the communities of the Valley of the Sarno, the southern Hirpini
region corresponding to the cultural assemblage termed Oliveto-Cairano (Valleys of the
Sele and Ofanto). People of the “Villanovan” horizon, traceable to the principal centers
of southern and central Etruria, have been recognized as the rulers of coastal southern
Campania, up to the boundary of the Gulf of Salerno, corresponding to the modern-day
small town of Pontecagnano with the neighboring ager picentinus and in the northern
interior sector of the region, in the fertile plain of the Volturno around the ancient Capua
(Santa Maria Capua Vetere). One last Villanovan nucleus has been identifi ed at Sala
Consilina in the Valley of the Diano, thus beyond the confi nes of the ancient regions,
and so it will not be considered in this chapter. In the second half of the eighth century
bc Campania became the site of the oldest Greek foundations in the West. As both the
literary sources and material culture testify, these are people from Euboea who settle at
Pithekoussai on the island of Ischia, and at Cumae on the mainland opposite, and they
profoundly change the order of the Tyrrhenian region.
As regards the debate on the Campanian “Villanovan” cultural horizon (Cuozzo 2012
with previous bibliography), according to one early hypothesis (Pallottino; D’Agostino)
the so-called “fi rst Etruscanization” is a phenomenon of “colonization,” paralleling the
Villanovan expansion into the region of Etruria Padana, connected with the displacement
from the central area of the peninsula of people associated with an agricultural population
but also aimed at acquiring control of the strategic maritime- and river-junctions of
the region. Such an identity appears diachronically attested, beyond the description of
the literary sources, by the long-term bonds between Pontecagnano, Capua and Etruria,
according to the epigraphic and cultural evidence. Conversely, a second reading of the
evidence, led by Renato Peroni and his “school,” does not attribute an ethnic value to
Villanovan cultural traits but suggests a similar process of socio-economic development
at the time of creation in both Etruria and Campania of cohesive, politically structured
communities, already organized in a proto-urban fashion.
The discoveries of recent years make it diffi cult today to maintain the absence of
Etruscan components not only in the case of Pontecagnano, where all the material
evidence and settlement organization are tied to the antiquity of the extraordinary