For many decades, it has been thought that the Samnites, an ancient Italic people known for their conflicts with the Romans, constructed fortified forts on hills throughout Italy as a precursor to building large, occupied settlements. This activity took place in the mid-first millennium BC and has been seen as a key development on the path to urbanization throughout prehistoric Italy as a whole. But the results of a recent archaeological study of this activity call this assumption into question. In a paper just published in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists Giacomo Fontana from Texas Tech University and Wieke de Neef from the University of Bamberg in Germany argue that little evidence exists to prove this theory is true. They claim that the ancient Samnite hillforts were more likely related to agricultural activity, and did not represent the beginning of the construction of Italian proto-cities as has been so often assumed. Read moreSection: NewsHistory & ArchaeologyAncient PlacesEuropeRead Later