Mar i as s unt a C uozzoF ig u re 16 .4 Pontecagnano: i.T h e necklace-pectoral from Tomb 2465; 2. Orientalizing apsidal
building in southern sector of the settlement; the oldest Etruscan inscription in Campania
(Tomb 3509, mid-seventh century bc).world that will be fully realized in the course of the fifth century bc. One of the aspects
investigated with more attention in recent years is the capillary process of urbanization
that invests Campania, paralleling the other regions of ancient Italy, in the course of the
Archaic period. Urban planning is implemented in a rigorous functional articulation of
spaces that will remain unchanged up until the Roman conquest and in a progressive
monumentalization of public areas, first of all the sanctuaries. The urban plan is usually
based on a regular grid of streets that subdivide blocks designated for residences and
separates the residential quarters from the areas designated public and from the zones to
be used for artisanal activities.
The process of urbanization and the renewed Etruscan interest in Campania are
manifested not only in those centers that represent a continuity of Etruscan components
in Campania - Capua and Pontecagnano - but above all they determine the formation of
a new network of settlements in areas that were not previously urbanized: the Sorrento
peninsula (Sorrento, Vico Equense, Stabiae); the territory of Nola (Nola); the Valley
of the Sarno (Nocera and Pompei). The Etruscan Marcina has been identified with
the settlement of Fratte di Salerno, founded at the mouth of the Irno, and destined to
supplant Pontecagnano, over the course of the sixth century bc, in the control of shipping
and interior routes. In northern Campania, apart from Capua - for the entire Archaic
period the principal Etruscan city of Campania — the urbanization extended to the nearby
Suessula and Calatia. In southern Campania two main spheres of influence seem to be
interwoven, the Etruscan and the Greek, the latter represented by new foundations
(Poseidonia and Velia). But it is the privileged axis Capua-Cumae that plays a dominant
role in the history and culture of archaic Campania.
Capua, as has been said, according to the sources capital of an Etruscan dodecapolis,
and Cumae, in the last part of the sixth century bc governed by the tyrant Aristodemos
(504—484 bc), experienced an extraordinary flowering as testified by the expansion and
(^12)
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