There can be little doubt that down to the beginning of the Early Iron Age the greater part of the Ager Veientanus, in common with the adjoining territories, was still covered by the primeval forest of which the Ciminian Forest of early Roman history was the still-considerable surviving remnant. There were doubtless trails through the forest, and the activities of hunters and charcoal burners would account for sporadic finds of stone implements (in so far as these have been correctly identified as of Neolithic or Bronze Age date). But the main centres of settlement at this early date lay elsewhere, along or near the coast and a few of the larger river valleys. One of these was, inevitably, the Tiber itself; another the river Fiora and the uplands around Lake Bolsena, forming a link between the coast and the middle valley of the Tiber. Outside these clearly defined areas of settlement the prehistoric archaeological record is largely a blank.

The road that led northwards from Veii up the east bank of the Cremera towards the Sorbo crater, left the city about half-way between the North-west Gate and the Ponte Sodo, by a gate which it is convenient to refer to as the Formello Gate (PBSR, xxix, 1961, pp. 19, 20), although the ancient road in fact passed a short distance to the west of the site of Formello and in places became obsolete as soon as the medieval village was founded. For the first 6 km. of its course, up to the crest of the Monti Sabatini, which it crossed a short distance to the north-west of Formello, it followed the watershed between those tributaries of the Cremera that join the main stream above Veii and those (notably the Fosso degli Olmetti and the Fosso di Pantanicci) that join it at or below the North-east Gate. From the crest it dropped down the steep eastern slopes of the Cremera gorge, crossing the river at the point where the whole drainage of the Sorbo crater converges into a single stream, just below the Ponte San Silvestro, whence, following a natural reentrant up on to the open crest of a ridge of higher ground, it climbed to the north-west lip of the crater. This it crossed through a spectacular cutting, and dropped into the Baccano crater, joining the ancient road from Veii to Nepi near Ponte dell'Ellera on the modern Via Cassia. An important branch of this road diverged to the right on the crest of the Monti Sabatini, heading north-eastwards down into and across the Sorbo crater. This is described in the following section (pp. 25–30).

Such settlement as there had been in south-eastern Etruria prior to the Early Iron Age had been established by small groups of pioneers moving up the river valleys from the Tiber. The first Early Iron Age settlers came instead from the west, overland, a difference of orientation which from the very outset made itself felt in the resulting pattern of settlement and communications. The first settlers of Veii seem to have come from the neighbourhood of Tarquinia or Vulci, along a line that is marked by the Villanovan sites in the Vesca and Biedano valleys and that of Monte Sant'Angelo on the crest of the Monti Sabatini, between the Lago di Martignano and the Baccano crater. From Monte Sant'Angelo, 11 km. north-west of Veii, there is a continuous ridgeway track leading down to Veii itself, a track which right down to Roman times was to remain Veii's principal outlet to the north.

The Etruscan road leaving Veii by the ‘Formello’ Gate and running northwards along the eastern side of the Cremera up to the western lip of the Sorbo Crater and down again to cross the Cremera near Ponte San Silvestro has been described in an earlier section (p. 18). In the Roman period the older road was still utilized, though it now crossed the Cremera by a bridge (noted in PBSR, xxix, 1961, p. 62). As it travelled north it served as an easy access for the wealthy villas on either side of it; there are three of these villas on the Terre di Bettona, south of Monte Massaruccio, and one some two kilometres north of Veii was apparently still occupied as late as the sixth century A.D. Nearly all the small sites and farms appear to have been in continuous occupation since Etruscan times, but on the big villa sites, as might be expected, very few Etruscan sherds have survived to show any earlier occupation.

The conquest of Veii by Rome in 396 B.C. was an event of far-reaching importance. The city of Veii was captured and sacked, and may even for a short while have been deserted. Its territory was appropriated to the Roman state, and those of its inhabitants who were friendly to Rome were incorporated in the four new tribes that were created on this occasion.

It would be idle to deny the long-term significance of these events. Rome's closest political rival had been eliminated and her frontiers extended overnight to the edges of the Great Ciminian Forest. She was inexorably launched on the career of northward expansion which was to lead ultimately to the conquest and annexation of the whole of Etruria. These were indeed epoch-making happenings; but it would be a mistake to exaggerate their immediate impact upon the daily life of the Veian countryside. The fact that a great many of the inhabitants were considered to be sufficiently friendly for incorporation within the Roman franchise suggests that they may also have been left in whole or partial possession of their lands; and even where the land did fall to new masters, the latter would not necessarily have been in any hurry to change the basis of what was evidently a flourishing agricultural economy.

The time is not yet ripe for a detailed account of the post-classical Ager Veientanus. The excavations at Capracorum (S. Cornelia) await publication and only two of the deserted medieval villages have been so much as sampled archaeologically. What follows can be no more than an interim account, setting out something of the historical and topographical framework within which future research may be expected to develop.

As the preceding chapter has shown, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire did not involve any immediate change in the social structure of the countryside north of Rome. Some properties were abandoned, others no doubt changed hands, but for a long time there does not seem to have been any radical shift in the pattern of settlement. Here and there one comes upon traces of what may have been squatters occupying the ruins of deserted villas and farms as early as the fifth and sixth centuries. But the sites that have yielded the bulk of the recognisably late Red Polished pottery are all the centres of large estates which had been continuously occupied since early Imperial times.