status symbols and luxury goods 39
watchtower construction in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centu
ries can illustrate these three processes of diffusion.^5
San Gimignano, a small Tuscan hill town, is famous for the imposing
cluster of watchtowers that dominate its skyline. Such towers were not
unique to San Gimignano. Watchtowers were a prevailing feature of Italian
cities’ skylines during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Watchtowers
were first erected by wealthy local families in order to contribute to their
city’s defense. The towers had clear functional value, but they also served as
conspicuous advertisement for the family’s wealth. The contributing fam
ily demonstrated that it had enough resources to satisfy its own needs as
well as to provide public goods. The practice of tower building soon led to
a competition among local families that resulted in what Thomson ( 1993 )
describes as “tower mania.” By the late fourteenth century, many Italian
cities looked like a forest of increasingly lofty towers. Bologna, for example,
had at least 194 towers known by family name, while Florence enjoyed the
defensive services of at least 400 privately owned towers, the tallest of which
reached 250 feet (Thomson 1993 , 175 ).
This tower mania demonstrates both the trickle down aspects of sym
bol diffusion as well as the processes of exaggeration. The symbol devel
oped from a recognized instrumental practice connected to core values
of the community, in this case maintaining the security of the inhabitants.
However, once the towers were converted into status symbols, through
their role as a venue for conspicuous consumption, they became coveted
by more and more local families. Tower construction started as a practice
of the very rich but soon spread to families farther down the social ladder,
consuming increasingly significant shares of these families’ wealth.
Obviously, beyond a certain point, an additional watchtower offers no
strategic value and in many cases could reduce the value of nearby towers
by blocking their view. In this increasingly dense and competitive forest
of towers, a new tower had to be taller and more extravagant in order to
stand out. Thus, reduced utility and increased extravagance contributed
to a spiral of waste and excess. The tower mania became so severe that
it threatened to impoverish many communities. Local authorities were
forced to intervene, and the private construction of towers was banned in
most Italian cities. In Florence, for example, all privately owned towers
were demolished by the seventeenth century (Thomson 1993 , 175 ).
Renaissance Italy was a political and cultural center. The tower ma
nia followed Mackie’s third process of diffusion when it spread from the
core to the periphery, from Italy to the rest of Europe. This process of
