Concrete is regarded as a quintessentially Roman achievement. The spread of the technology is usually dated to the fourth or third centuriesb.c., and interpreted as a symptom of Rome's early expansion in Italy. In this paper I offer a reappraisal of the available evidence for early concrete construction in Rome. On the basis of stratigraphic evidence, I conclude that a later date should be assigned to most of the remains. I situate the origins of the technological innovation within the radical change in architectural styles that unfolded in the middle of the second centuryb.c., affecting both domestic architecture and public building. The new chronology has an impact on current models of cultural diffusion in Roman Italy, linking the development of Late Republican architecture with the broader debate on the cultural implications of the Roman conquest.

Since the summer of 2009, the ancient site of Gabii has been the focus of excavations conducted by the University of Michigan. Stratigraphic investigations near...

Excavations at the Latin city of Gabii in 2012–15 conducted by the Gabii Project have uncovered a monumental building complex, hitherto known only very partially from previous excavations in the 1990s. Organized on a series of three artificial terraces that regularized the slope of the volcanic terrain, it measures some 60 m by 35 m, occupying an entire city-block. It is prominently situated at one of the most central locations within the city, on the main urban thoroughfare at the important intersection of the roads from Tibur, Praeneste and Rome. Stratigraphic evidence and construction techniques date the original phase of the building to the mid-third century BC. This report focuses on a contextualization and description of this first, mid-Republican phase and offers a preliminary interpretation of this complex as a public building, with spaces designed for a variety of functions: bathing, public feasting, and ritual activity. If this is correct, it now represents one of the very few examples of public buildings other than temples and fortifications known from the mid-Republican period, and sheds important light on the development of Roman architecture and of the Latin cities in a crucial and obscure period.

Because of its exceptional state of preservation, Pompeii has traditionally been viewed as an ideal site at which to study the early development of Roman architecture. Scholars have looked to the Pompeian evidence in order to provide parallels for periods and classes of buildings that in Rome are less well documented archaeologically. The focus of recent debate has been on the Mid- to Late Republican transition, with an emphasis on building types whose introduction at Pompeii would demonstrate a direct cultural link with practice at Rome. The prevailing view is that both the town-planning and the architecture of Pompeii in the 3rd-2nd c. B.C. were strongly influenced by Roman models or prototypes. Similarly, there has been a tendency to refer to the Pompeian materials as the missing link for the high dating of early Roman concrete architecture in Rome, which would have been introduced around the same period. In a recent review of the evidence from Rome, I have argued for a later chronology, which, inevitably, prompts a reconsideration of the development and cultural significance of concrete construction at Pompeii.

Recent archaeological investigations have revealed that at the end of the fifth century b.c.e., Gabii, an ancient centre of Latium Vetus, was reorganised in a planned, quasi-orthogonal pattern, which constitutes an anomaly in the regional context. This is indicative of an important transformational moment in its history, representing a break from previous patterns of occupation and involving significant spatial and socio-political discontinuities with the previous settlement. This article proposes that the reorganisation reflects a moment of refoundation after a period of abandonment, an urban trajectory that can be clarified by a critical re-examination of the historical evidence, focusing on two pivotal processes: the devotio of the city by the Romans and the dynamics of early colonisation in Latium. This new interpretation not only has important implications for understanding the archaeology of Gabii and of early republican urbanism, but also sheds light on one of the ‘darkest’ ages in Roman history.