ABSTRACT
The history of southern Italy, modern Puglia, Basilicata, and Calabria, prior to and in the aftermath of the Roman conquest is complicated but an understanding of it is essential to the study of urbanism in this part of the peninsula. Southern Italy’s position in the central part of the Mediterranean, dangling precipitously into the middle of the sea, almost touching Sicily and reaching out to north Africa, has marked it as a lightning rod for contact with other Mediterranean peoples, including Greeks, Illyrians, Phoenicians, Arabs, Albanians, Normans, Spaniards, and Venetians, among others. Throughout antiquity, various waves of migrants and invaders, including Greeks and Carthaginians from outside the peninsula, as well as Oscan and Latin speaking peoples from within, have moved into the region and added their own unique elements to the development of urban forms within the region over a long historical arc.
