Resumen de Porta Capena, Capena e Capua; Gabii e Cavum: Toponomastica e archeologia dei paesaggi
This paper offers a new interpretation of a group of Etruscan and Latin place names (Capena, Capua; Gabii, Cabum) through an analysis of literary and epigraphic sources, and data offered by recent landscape archaeology research in the same areas. From a linguistic point of view there are two etymons which arise from two linguistic bases: an Etruscan base for Capua, Capena (and Porta Capena in Rome), and a Latin base for Gabii and Cabum. Although they belong to two different onomastic forms, they are isofunctional from a semantic point of view. These place names come from different (even if closely situated) language areas, but they describe settlements with similar physical landscapes, namely deep valleys, sometimes with volcanic craters, karst dolines and sinkholes. Large settlements arose near these areas from the Late Bronze Age onwards and during the early Iron Age. In parallel, there was an increase in cultural interaction and hybridity between the communities of the geographic areas corresponding to southern Etruria, Latium and Campania. Such developments provide a chronological term to frame the diffusion of these place names.
