The ancient literary tradition, together with piecemeal archaeo logical evidence, has conventionally served as a basis for investigating the origin of the city of Rome. This study aims to counterbalance earlier studies by using archaeo logical evidence as the main data of the examination, particularly new archaeo logical discoveries and scientific studies. The archaeo logical record from early Rome shows that urbanization was a gradual process taking place over several centuries. However, from the wide range of archaeo logical material studied in this article, it is evident that an intense wave of urbanization emerged in Rome in the archaic period. Certain features conventionally attributed to cities, such as population growth, monumental architecture, urban planning, networks, public inscriptions, and craft specialization, are visible in the archaeo logical material from the sixth and early fifth centuries bc. KEYWORDS Early Rome; archaic period; urbanization; archaeo logy of pre-Roman Italy; archaeological science Acknowledgements and Funding DetailsThis work was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation under the grant DNRF 119 -Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Rubina Raja, Christopher Smith, and the anonymous reviewers, all of whom made invaluable improvements to this article.

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