This paper outlines a project that is building a model for assessing multicultural interaction, which will be used for the study of the expansion of Rome in central Italy in the wider context of Latin colonisation. Its theoretical framework incorporates Social Identity Theory and the concept of mental distance applied to geographically related groups. The key materials studied at this stage are funerary architecture and inscriptions, which reveal different nested aspects of group identities. Here we briefly present the local context of the study – Nepi and the Faliscan area – with the different languages and alphabets used in the area. This area will be compared with its neighbouring areas in order to analyse long-term changes in group identities from the precolonial period to the colonial period.

This article presents the Stockholm Volterra Project and its developments since 2013. This project, run by Stockholm University and the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, has carried out geophysical prospections in Volterra in collaboration with Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Pisa e Livorno. The aims and methods of the project are outlined together with a closer presentation of key sites from 2014 and 2015: the ‘Football Pitch’, the area in front of the church of San Giusto, the ruined church of Santo Stefano, the amphitheatre and Ortino sites.

This paper discusses the survey evidence from the Orientalizing and Archaic settlement and funerary sites at Nepi (ancient Nepet), one of the first Latin colonies outside Latium adiectum. The comparison of its pre-Roman, pre-colonial developments to the Roman patterns from the Nepi Survey Project and the trends from other Latin colonies in southern Etruria allows the examination of the local effects of Roman colonialism. The evidence shows that Nepi seemed to develop as an independent city state in the Orientalizing period, peaked in the Archaic period and weakened before the capture of Veii in 396 bc, making it easier to defeat. Rural settlement all but disappeared afterwards with similar hiatus apparent at the sister colony at Sutri as well. In the third century bc the first few villas near the town appeared as a sign of the establishment of a Roman settlement pattern. The extensive ‘rural colonization’ at Nepi, similarly to Sutri and Cosa, started only in the second century bc when all southern Etruria had entered a colonial phase and could develop alongside Rome. Thus, Latin colonization disrupted earlier patterns and the colonies appear to have been originally outposts set up to secure new territory.