The emergence of large cities in central Italy is a question that has been discussed widely in recent decades (e.g. Fulminante, Reference Fulminante2014; Stoddart, Reference Stoddart2020). The major changes in settlement patterns in southern Etruria took place from the Final Bronze Age (FBA) to the beginning of the Early Iron Age (EIA), when the relatively numerous smaller villages were replaced by fewer larger settlements located at the sites of later Etruscan cities (di Gennaro, Reference di Gennaro1986). Population pressure and the competition for agricultural land were identified as potential drivers behind this change on the basis of a limited number of GIS analyses (Rajala, Reference Rajala2003), and this view was also promoted by later GIS studies on Rome by Francesca Fulminante (Reference Fulminante2014).

Sotgia presents the first wider agricultural GIS modelling of southern Etruria in order to study the crucial period of change from the FBA to the EIA. The question he wants to answer is what role primary production had in the socio-political change of southern Etruria. Sotgia applies the Agro-Economistic Approach, introduced to archaeology by the Cambridge Palaeoeconomy School in the 1950s. This school began to use site-catchment analysis that was promptly applied on Italian sites (Barker, Reference Barker1972). Sotgia’s work can be seen as a continuation of Barker’s work with the application of GIS methodology and with added neo-Marxist approaches to explain the relationships between production and societal change. For the Roman period, Helen Goodchild (Reference Goodchild2007) has already used GIS to model agricultural production in southern Etruria, and Luca Alessandri (Reference Alessandri2013) has done the same for Latium Vetus between the Bronze and Early Iron Age.

Sotgia’s book is divided into five chapters. The first one introduces the Agro-Economistic Approach. The second, called ‘Materials and methods’, presents the landscape, agro-pastoral exploitation model, and the practical application of this model through its different steps. The third chapter, ‘The territorial systems in southern Etruria between the FBA and EIA’, discusses the chronological development of the different areas within southern Etruria. The fourth chapter, ‘The different trajectories of the transition from village to city’, compares the developments in different areas within southern Etruria. The self-evidently named ‘Conclusions’ presents the final summary of the study.

Sotgia uses the refined Italian periodization for the FBA. He does not specify unequivocally his source for dating the different sites used in the analyses, but he refers to the works of Belardelli et al. (Reference Belardelli, Angle, Di Gennaro and Trucco2007) and Barbaro (Reference Barbaro2010) at the beginning of the book, and uses Barbaro’s (Reference Barbaro2010) site sizes for calculations.

The book suffers from minor editorial errors: for example, Stoddart is misspelled as Stoddard, Rajala as Rajalla, TINITALY as TINYTALY, di Gennaro and Guidi Reference di Gennaro and Guidi2010 as di Gennaro and Guidi 2011, Pacciarelli Reference Pacciarelli2010: 18 as Pacciarelli 2010: 8, and Helen Goodchild is occasionally misgendered and referred to as ‘he’. More serious are the obvious omissions in the discussion: Fulminante’s (Reference Fulminante2014) population numbers and GIS modelling that are based on Rajala’s (Reference Rajala2003) work are not discussed. These calculations were based on minimum population numbers and not maximum figures, and as such they have been often dismissed by Italian colleagues as too low (see Rajala, Reference Rajala and Borgo2006). Sotgia also takes di Gennaro and Guidi’s (Reference di Gennaro and Guidi2010) population density of 100/150 persons per hectare at face value. However, this population density does not correlate with the calculated simulated population values and hence the origin of this data remains somewhat opaque.

Sotgia bases many aspects of his work on the analyses of Van Joolen (Reference van Joolen2003) who, similarly to Goodchild (Reference Goodchild2007), relied on a wider land suitability classification than Rajala (Reference Rajala2003) or Fulminante (Reference Fulminante2014). Sotgia’s work lacks the discussion on the diet of prehistorical populations in central Italy that was a key part in the work of Rajala and Goodchild. Instead, Sotgia presents the palaeobotanical and archaeozoological ratios for the area based on Minniti (Reference Minniti2012), and refers to the Roman agricultural writers, such as Columella, whereas the prehistorical diets should be at the centre of the discussions. In addition, there are methodological problems in applying the palaeobotanical results directly.

In the end, Sotgia creates a GIS model that is adaptable to different geographical and chronological settings. Ultimately, he calculates the production for each site and assesses the suitability of the landscape for different agro-pastoral activities. Following this classification, he identifies non-self-sufficient and surplus producing sites within the landscape. Altitude and slope values are used to classify different landforms. The classification was carried out using the ArcGIS programme and the TINITALY elevation model with ten metre resolution. Southern Etruria is divided into nine primary macro-areas, including Agri Faliscus, Tarquiniensis, Caeretanus, and Veientanus. Site catchments are defined by using cost function calculating Tobler’s (Reference Tobler1993) hiking function and by defining the distance over which the site exerted influence using the ‘Bubble method’ (see Alessandri, Reference Alessandri2015).

The agri-pastoral model is based on the available palaeobotanical and archaeozoological data (Minniti, Reference Minniti2012). For cereals (that Sotgia calls ‘grasses’), a suitability model is created combining suitability classifications, including altitude, slope, erosion, distance to water, and moisture. Sotgia also creates suitability models for olives, vines, and legumes. The established ratios, calculated from the palaeobotanical and palynological data and not on the basis of reconstructed diets, are thirty-eight per cent for cereals, twenty nice per cent for legumes, nineteen per cent for grapevine, and fourteen per cent for olives. The ratios of different meats are deduced from archaeological literature, and in the absence of figures for particular sites, average figures for southern Etruria are used: Bos thirty-eight per cent, Sus sixteen per cent and Ovis/Capra forty-six per cent (Minniti, Reference Minniti2012). These percentages are then used to calculate the proportions of pasture according to the pasture needs for individual domestic animals. I doubt, if the palaeobotanical and palynological data can be used without adjusting to model cultivated areas. Otherwise, the model seems well researched.

In Sotgia’s third chapter, the reader can piece together the regional developments that are not summarized by the author. The results suggest that population in Veii probably surpassed the level that could be sustained by the territory in the EIA. Thus, Sotgia suggests that the inhabitants of Veii colonized the neighbouring Faliscan area that was left empty after the FBA. Similarly, at Caere, the population probably exceeded the carrying capacity of the territory and Sotgia suggests that alternative methods of resource acquisition were explored. However, at Tarquinia, the maximum population was aligned with the available resources. In the Tolfa Mountains, in the later boundary zone between Tarquinia and Caere, the landscape could not sustain the fairly dense network of FBA settlements and the area was deserted. In the Fiora valley, the northern part of the area could not support the population by the end of the FBA whereas the environment around Vulci and the Lake Bolsena (Bizenzio) allowed more freely the development of local modes of exploitation. In the Upper Tiber Valley, there were persistently two conglomerates: one at the Lake Bolsena and another further east (Orvieto/Volsinii); these were classified as non-self-sufficient.

In his discursive fourth chapter, Sotgia concentrates on the societal changes that had their origin in favouring a federal model instead of continuous raiding of neighbouring villages and the economic change from primary production that produced surplus to trade and industries. He emphasizes the locations of the sites in relation to the resources and lines of communication in order to optimally and effectively exploit the resources. As an early adopter of the proto-urban settlement model, the community at Tarquinia was able to create surplus and use it to its advantage. This model then was copied by other communities along the coast and inland. The population pressures could have then been eased with the foundation of secondary settlements, often on the earlier sites of FBA villages. The Marxist models of explanation elevate the author’s interpretations onto a higher level compared to an average GIS study.

Sotgia discusses the dependant and surplus producing sites, but does not seem to tie the results into an overarching narrative, at least not revisiting the outcomes of the subchapters in the ‘Conclusions’. It is rather a lost opportunity in using agro-pastoral exploitation as an explanation for changes in settlement patterns. In addition, Sotgia takes for granted fundamentals from earlier research without discussing their basis. This is understandable, considering the amount of GIS modelling required, but it means that the archaeological discussions lack depth when parameters and results are not used to their full potential in summarizing the local and regional narratives.

All in all, this book builds upon earlier GIS research in the area by presenting a convincing land classification model that has already been applied in modelling population dynamics in Etruria (Zeviani et al., Reference Zeviani, Bilotti, Simmons and Stoddart2025). This model and the Agro-Economistic Approach are applicable beyond Italy. Nevertheless, Sotgia’s population calculations remain opaque and his discussions of pre-Roman diets and land management patterns should have been more detailed and not over-reliant on Roman writings. Sotgia could have pointed out the potentially causal links between population levels, agro-pastoral exploitation, and changes in settlement patterns from villages to cities. However, the ideological explanations underpinning the interpretations of the relationships between local economies and society add sufficient depth to the arguments. Ultimately, the results align with the general propositions of the ‘Roman School of Protohistory’ on the outline of the changes and the socio-economic complexity behind them. Thus, the volume exposes the English-speaking GIS community to the Italian dialogue between economic and socio-ideological explanations.