ABSTRACT
The main sign of the new political balance created by Rome was the disappearance of the Lucanian hilltop settlements and the foundation of new Roman centers, as well as the contraction of most sanctuaries after the end of the third century BC. Just a few decades later, within Augustus's Tota Italia, Lucania was transformed together with Bruttium into the Regio III, forever losing its original political and institutional physiognomy. The general decline of the Lucanian hilltop centers went hand in hand with the progressive ruralization of the territory surrounding the walled centers, which featured the appearance of new forms of land exploitation between the second century BC and the first century AD. The military conquest of southern Italy, anticipated by a politics of early colonization that aimed to control the territory, had as its main outcome the gradual transformation of Lucania's territorial, political, institutional, and social organization.
