A term employed for recent maritime-based analysis of the Mediterranean. This approach suggests that the principal developments of complex societies were dependent on networks of trade that produced key nodes at the points of highest interaction. In the case of the Etruscans, these would be the major cities and their ports of trade such as Pyrgi, Gravisca, and Regisvilla. This idea requires detailed research on activities such as trade and exchange, with all the associated problems, to implement the analysis in an essentially prehistoric society.
Historical Dictionary of the Etruscans. Simon K. F. Stoddart.