Trasformazioni urbanistiche nell’Italia centro-meridionale, dalla guerra sociale all’avvento del Principato: riscontri, nuovi elementi, cambi di prospettiva 30 anni dopo Italia romana

The paper will start from Emilio Gabba's thinking on some aspects of urban transformations in central-southern Italy, widening the range of parameters considered by the scholar (such as the construction of forums, the transformation of rural structures, the permanence or discontinuity in religious practices). Before proposing some case studies, the changes that have taken place over the last fifty years in historical and archaeological language and epistemology are emphasized, albeit cursorily, against the backdrop of the up-to-date picture of the status quo and the innovations that research has brought back in the regions under consideration. The excursus will also be an opportunity to test Gabba’s reading of some wide-ranging and far-reaching phenomena, such as the organization of communities after the Social War and the effects of rural depopulation on the urbanization process.