Hello, everybody, and welcome back. We know that Rome was born at the end of a long process, started in this area around the middle of the second millennium. Now, let's have a look at this region here, Latium, which is where Rome was actually founded. Latium is a large plane limited by a river, here, the sea, and the upper land chain with a rocky massif here in the middle, and this smaller chain here. Latini, lived here, and was surrounded by other Italic people like Hernici and Volsci here. In such ancient times, these people were not able yet to write history. We know what they thought about their origin, according to their memories. For example, they believed that the first inhabitants in Rome, were gods. A terrible god with two heads, Janus, here in this part. The second god with a sickle here in this part of Rome. According to a different story, people moved from the core of Italy into this plane. They were called the Aborigine. It's a very weird name. It doesn't mean anything, just the people who were there from the origin. The Aborigine were there, in the middle of Italy. Then they moved down along the river valley and invaded Latium. At a certain time, a second group of foreign people moved from east here, and sailed down to Italy. They were led by a nobleman, Aeneas, who had to flee from Troy and carried his friends and his son here. Aeneas went along the river Tiber, then founded a new city here, Lavinium. Then, the Trojans mixed up with the Aborigine and a new people was born, the Latini. The son of Aeneas moved here in the rocky massif and founded Alba Longa. The last king of Alba Longa gave birth to Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. This is how the ancient people try to explain the origin of the city. They also had different stories for the same origin. For example, according to a different memory, Latium was divided into 30 regions. Some right here, you can see. They were 30 parts, and each dot here represents the main village of this area. These people were united by a rite celebrated in this sanctuary here near Alba Longa. As you can see here, the strange thing is that in the site where Rome will be founded, you have three of these groups. They were called people, populu in Latin. This is how we can imagine, by this such an ancient time, the sight of Rome weighed on the river, and the three groups, and the top of each hill occupied by a village. Here you can see again a reconstruction of a possible distribution of these 30 peoples. One of the most important memories that the Latium people had were the foundation myths of each city. As you can see in this chart here, each red square means that, that city was believed to have been founded by an Alban or Trojan ancestor. If you compare the distribution of this populu and the foundation myth of the Alban origin, the overlay is almost absolute. This is a way to understand how much of this memory can be reliable for us, as a shared memory of a common people. If we look at the same problem from an archaeological point of view, things are little more complicated. We have no memories, we have just clues and artifacts to be analyzed and interpreted. Between the end of the Bronze Age, and the beginning of the Iron Age, that is around the 10th century BC, something is changing in the organization of the landscape in this area. In Etruria, for example, here, we have a certain number of small villages scattered around the river valleys. In Latium, we have as well a certain number of small villages. This is the river Tiber, Etruria was there, and this is Latium with its small villages. This is the site where Rome is going to appear. In archaeological terms, you can identify a certain area according to a certain culture on the basis of artifacts. On this table, you see the lump-sum vases, which help archeologists to identify the lump-sum culture. This lump-sum culture spans from the end of the 10th century BC until the end of the 7th century BC. This you can see the changing of each shape indicates a shift in time. This is the first appearance of this Latin culture. You can see just very simple jug in clay and most of the evidence we have comes from graves such as this one. No villages of this Latin culture have ever been largely excavated. We've just scattered remains of post holes or clay floors, but the graves are so many. There are so many that we can have a clear idea of the people who were expressing themselves using grave goods. This is a tomb from Rome. The body was burned and the ashes were inserted in this large vase and the other vases were put with the larger vase, which we call the urn, into a pit. These are other Latin tombs with the urn here, with a lid, and of other grave goods. Well, this one, for example, for another site in lump-sum. This is a typical urn of Latin culture, which was shaped like a normal hut. That's why it's called the hut urn. It's a way of symbolizing the staying of the deceased person in his own house. This is how the hut urn was placed in the grave. One more tomb here and one more again. Around 900 BC, a great change occurs. The small villages are abandoned and people move to live together in fewer, larger sites in Etruria here, as you can see. This is the Bronze Age phase, and here's the Iron Age phase with fewer sites. On the left bank of the river Tiber, we have no evident change. The distribution of the villages stays the same. The only difference is that here, when Rome is going to appear later, three or two at least new clay are joined in one large settlement. This is how the artifacts show us the changing in this period. Small vases are here with the handle over here. Once again, these amphora and these kind of jugs are now appearing for the first time. There's another change. The bodies are placed in coffins and no more burns, so we don't have urns anymore but graves. More than this, people now begin to write. This is a vase dating back to the end of the 9th century BC with writings script on it. Or just symbols like this one on these axes found in a pit. A votive offering maybe. When we move from the 9th century to the 8th century, changes in artifacts are even more evident. For example, with these new shapes here, like this cup, this is intended to drink wine and these dishes here, they're intended to eat meat. The cultural habit is changing. We have weapons now in graves and the so-called princely tombs appear now. We have writings, we have weapons, we have metal, and we have a higher number of these grave goods. Something is changing. The small villages that were unified in one large settlement are nearly to be turned into a proper city with a political organization.
