Marco Cavalieri

The challenge of my participation in this ARC project is to provide an original, critical and comparative point of view to the core of the research, concentrating on the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. Being an archaeologist specialized in Western Mediterranean culture, mainly between the Iron Age and the Roman Empire, I can offer interesting comparisons and alternatives from research on the Italian peninsula between the end of the Bronze Age (12^th to 10^th centuries B.C.) until the advanced historical period, which can put the interpretative models for the analysis of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean societies in perspective.

Although my research over the last ten years is especially historiographical and archaeological, I can also provide theoretical perspectives to the project, especially where crisis periods are concerned, since I have also investigated the changes in rural Tuscany during Late Antiquity, as well as urban planning in both Italy and the provinces. My interest in religion, politics, images and settlement history can further reinforce the theoretical frame of the ARC.

Moreover, I recently embarked on a new archaeological project near Rome, the site of the ancient Sabine municipal town of Cures, in the Tiber valley. The interest of this site lies in it being continuously inhabited from the Late Bronze Age until the fourth century AD and we will explore how this was possible. Cures is one of the Sabine towns which is closely tied to the origin and earliest identity of Rome since myths connects the town with the earliest phases of Roman history, including the rape of the Sabines and two Roman kings, Titus Tatius and Numa Pompilius, are said to be originating from Cures.