The Ground Beneath Society

We are delighted to host the conference “The Ground Beneath Society,” organized by Dario Monti (UCLouvain) and Diego Suárez Martínez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid).

Understanding how ancient societies were structured requires addressing the complex relationship between environmental conditions and cultural practices. This conference explores these dynamics through a comparative perspective focusing on the Italian and Iberian peninsulas during the first millennium BC and the period leading to Roman expansion. Despite their geographical distance and the diversity of the peoples inhabiting them, both regions shared a marked environmental diversity, where fertile coastal plains connected to Mediterranean exchange networks coexisted with extensive mountainous interiors and fragmented upland landscapes. These contrasts had important implications for settlement organisation, mobility patterns, economic strategies, and forms of territorial control.