From Safin to Roman: Cultural Change and Hybridization in Central Adriatic Italy av Oliva (Professor in Classial Archaeology Director of the Centre of

<p><em>From </em>Safin<em> to Roman</em> investigates the Central Adriatic Apennines (roughly the modern region of Abruzzo), occupied in antiquity by Italic populations variously termed ¿<em>Sabelli¿</em>, ¿<em>Sabellics¿</em> or ¿<em>Sabellians¿.</em> For too long the region has been seen merely as a mountainous and isolated ¿terra di pastori¿, sparsely populated with shepherds from prehistory to the late Hellenistic period, thus overestimating the role of the Romans in the organisation and exploitation of the landscape. The region in general has received little scholarly attention internationally compared with Tyrrhenian Italy, although the last three decades have been very rich in excavations and finds. The role of stock-raising itself needs to be reinterpreted, because it changed greatly from period to period and certainly did not exclude other economical resources, already in early periods. The topography of the area and recent finds, show that agriculture was also important for t