INTRODUCTION

In this chapter we discuss settlement dynamics in the RPC study area in the Sibaritide and its hinterland with a special focus on the catchment area and hinterland of the protohistorical settlement of Timpone della Motta. The site of Timpone della Motta has been excavated by the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (GIA) since 1991 under the direction of Prof. Marianne Kleibrink, who continued and extended the earlier Italian excavations of the late 1960s and 1970s. Systematic surveys in a 5 km- radius around the site started in 2000 as part of the third and last campaign that was carried out within the RPC scheme. It continued earlier topographical work carried out by members of the excavation team in the surroundings of Timpone della Motta. Since then the excavations at Timpone della Motta and the surveys in its catchment area have continued on an annual basis. In 2003 the surveys were incorporated in the Raganello Archaeological Project (RAP) under the direction of Attema and Van Leusen. Present knowledge of the patterns of protohistorical settlement in the Sibaritide (Bronze Age and Early Iron Age) owes much to the settlement models elaborated by Renato Peroni and his team on the basis of their excavations at Broglio di Trebisacce and the topographical surveys they carried out in the foothills of the Sibaritide. For the Archaic and Hellenistic settlement patterns we have used the sites that were recorded by Lorenzo Quilici and colleagues as a point of reference. The latter sites were recorded during a large-scale archaeological inventory of the Sibaritide plain, foothills and – to some extent - uplands. The studies that were mentioned above will be used to provide the general framework to which we will relate the results of GIA fieldwork on the Timpone della Motta. Some of the new landscape archaeological data of the Raganello Archaeological Project (RAP) have also been incorporated in the present chapter, as an example of how the current settlement models may be refined on the local scale.

This chapter is structured as follows. We will chronologically discuss settlement patterns according to a division of the study area in three physio-geographical units: coastal plain, foothills and hinterland, for which we will use the periods set out in table 4.1. However, we will first take a look at environmental change and historic land use.