Recent excavations and theoretical advances have revealed evidence of an early and perhaps independent nucleation and centralization process in the region south of the Alps, a phenomenon that has been undervalued in previous studies. In this paper I present a broad overview and attempt to reassess the role of the Cisalpine regions as crossroads of trade and cultural transfer between the Mediterranean and central Europe through a critical evaluation of key archaeological evidence. I adopt alternative and up-to-date perspectives on the urbanization phenomenon, disentangling commonsensical and text-driven definitions of urbanism and social formation, while challenging the outdated “check-list” approach. This theoretical framework should promote a paradigm shift that leads to a substantial backdating and broadening of the appearance of complex site agglomerations in northern Italy, avoiding unidirectional development patterns and instead looking at possible cases of instability, ephemerality, and seasonality. The adoption of a comparative perspective triggers a timely disentanglement of the simplistic equation between urbanism and social hierarchy. Beyond a narrow and selective emphasis on elites, this paper considers alternative social entities and actions, including commoners, subaltern groups, and cooperation.

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Even though multidisciplinary approaches are widely used for the investigation of archaeological findings, magnetic analyses are still little exploited and only rarely applied to the determination of ancient artefacts use. Here, we present the results of a combined archaeological, morphological and 2 magnetic study carried out on the ring-shape clay artefacts found in large quantities at the protohistoric site of Villa del Foro (Alessandria, Northern Italy). The shape and significant number of such artefacts make their archaeometric investigation very interesting to understand the technological conditions of their production and use. A morphological investigation carried out on 640 fragments showed inhomogeneity in their dimensions, colour, form, and clay refinement.Magnetic measurements show thermal stability after heat treatment up to around 500-600 o C, while further heating at higher temperature introduces some magnetic mineralogy changes. Thermal demagnetization of the samples generally shows a strong and stable thermal remanent magnetization.In few cases, a clear secondary component is present, suggesting partial re-heating or displacement at temperatures ranging from 200 o C to 450 o C. The results obtained indicate that the investigated ring-shaped artefacts were baked during their manufacture at temperatures of at least 600 °C. The archaeomagnetic investigation does not show any systematic evidence for magnetic components related to cooking activities and it is therefore suggested that the rings were used as weight looms and baked only during their production procedures. Such pilot study can be used as reference for the identification and study of similar objects found in other archaeological sites worldwide.

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