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The concept of Italic peoples is widely used in linguistics and historiography of ancient Italy. In a strict sense, commonly used in linguistics, it refers to the Osco-Umbrians and Latino-Faliscans, speakers of the Italic languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. In a broader sense, commonly used in historiography, all the ancient peoples of Italy are referred to as Italic peoples, including the non-Indo-European ones, as Rhaetian people, Ligures and Etruscans. As the Latins achieved a dominant position among these tribes, by virtue of the expansion of the Ancient Rome, the other Italic tribes adopted Latin language and culture as part of the process of Romanization.
Outside of the specialised linguistic literature, the term is also used to describe the ancient peoples of Italy as defined in Roman times, including pre-Ancient Rome peoples like the Etruscans and the , who did not speak Indo-European languages. Such use is improper in linguistics, but employed by sources such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, which contends that «Italy attained a unified ethnolinguistic, political, and cultural physiognomy only after the Roman conquest, yet its most ancient peoples remain anchored in the names of the regions of Roman Italy — Latium, Campania, Apulia, Bruttium, Lucania, Emilia Romagna, Samnium, Picenum, Umbria, Etruria, Veneto, and Liguria».
From the late third to the early second millennium BC, tribes coming both from the north and from Franco-Iberia brought the Beaker culturep. 144, Richard Bradley The prehistory of Britain and Ireland, Cambridge University Press, 2007, and the use of bronze smithing, to the Po Valley, to Tuscany and to the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily. The Beakers could have been the link which brought the Yamnaya dialects from Hungary to Austria and Bavaria. These dialects might then have developed into Proto-Celtic. The arrival of Indo-Europeans into Italy is in some sources ascribed to the Beakers. A migration across the Alps from East-Central Europe by early Indo-Europeans is thought to have occurred around 1800 BC. According to Barfield the appearance of Polada culture is connected to the movement of new populations coming from southern Germany and from Switzerland. According to Bernard Sergent, the origin of the Ligurian linguistic family (in his opinion distantly related to the Celtic and Italic ones) would have to be found in the Polada and Rhone cultures, southern branches of the Unetice culture. These individuals settled in the foothills of the Eastern Alps and present a material culture similar to contemporary cultures of Switzerland, Southern Germany, and Austria.
In the mid-second millennium BCE, the Terramare culture developed in the Po Valley. The Terramare culture takes its name from the black earth ( terra marna) residue of settlement mounds, which have long served the fertilizing needs of local farmers. These people were still hunters, but had domesticated animals; they were fairly skillful metallurgists, casting bronze in moulds of stone and clay, and they were also agriculturists, cultivating beans, the vine, wheat and flax. The Latino-Faliscan people have been associated with this culture, especially by the archaeologist Luigi Pigorini.
The Proto-Villanovan culture dominated the peninsula and replaced the preceding Apennine culture. The Proto-Villanovans practiced cremation and buried the ashes of their dead in Urnfield-style double-cone shaped funerary urns, often decorated with geometric designs. Elite graves containing jewellery, bronze armour and horse harness fittings were separated from ordinary graves, showing for the first time the development of a highly hierarchical society, so characteristic of Indo-European cultures. The burial characteristics relate the Proto-Villanovan culture to the Central European Urnfield culture and Celtic Hallstatt culture that succeeded it. It is not possible to tell these apart in their earlier stages. Generally speaking, Proto-Villanovan settlements have been found in almost the whole Italian peninsula from Veneto to eastern Sicily, although they were most numerous in the northern-central part of Italy. The most important settlements excavated are those of Frattesina in Veneto region, Bismantova in Emilia-Romagna and near the Monti della Tolfa, north of Rome. Various authors, such as Marija Gimbutas, associated this culture with the arrival, or the spread, of the proto-Italic languages into the Italian peninsula.M. Gimbutas Bronze Age Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe pp. 339–345
In the 13th century BC, Proto-Celts (probably the ancestors of the Lepontii people), coming from the area of modern-day Switzerland, eastern France and south-western Germany ( RSFO Urnfield group), entered Northern Italy (Lombardy, eastern Piedmont and Canton Ticino), starting the Canegrate culture, who not long time after, merging with the indigenous Ligurians, produced the mixed Golasecca culture.Venceslas Kruta: La grande storia dei celti. La nascita, l'affermazione e la decadenza, Newton & Compton, 2003, , G. Frigerio, Il territorio comasco dall'età della pietra alla fine dell'età del bronzo, in Como nell'antichità, Società Archeologica Comense, Como 1987. Canegrate had a cultural dynamic, as expressed in its pottery and bronzework, that was completely new to the area and was a typical example of the western Hallstatt culture. The name comes from the locality of Canegrate in Lombardy, south of Legnano and 25 km north of Milan, where Guido Sutermeister discovered important archaeological finds (approximately 50 tombs with ceramics and metallic objects). It is one of the richer archeological sites of Northern Italy.
In the region south of the Tiber ( Latium Vetus), the Latial culture of the Latins emerged, while in the north-east of the peninsula the Este culture of the Adriatic Veneti appeared. Roughly in the same period, from their core area in central Italy (modern-day Umbria and Sabina region), the Osci- began to emigrate in various waves, through the process of Ver sacrum, the ritualized extension of colonies, in southern Latium, Molise and the whole southern half of the peninsula, replacing the previous tribes, such as the Opici and the Oenotrians. This corresponds with the emergence of the Terni culture, which had strong similarities with the Celtic cultures of Hallstatt and La Tène. The Umbri necropolis of Terni, which dates back to the 10th century BC, was identical in every aspect to the Celtic necropolis of the Golasecca culture.
The Latins eventually succeeded in unifying the Italic elements in the country. Many non-Latin Italic tribes adopted Latin culture and acquired Roman citizenship. During this time Italic colonies were established throughout the country, and non-Italic elements eventually adopted the Latin language and culture in a process known as Romanization. In the early first century BC, several Italic tribes, in particular the Marsi and the Samnites, rebelled against Roman rule. This conflict is called the Social War. After Roman victory was secured, all peoples in Italy, except for the Celts of the Po Valley, were granted Roman citizenship.
In the subsequent centuries, Italic tribes were assimilated into Latin culture in a process known as Romanization.
Even the Samnites had original representational forms that had a lot of influence on Roman dramaturgy such as the Atellan Farce comedies, and some architectural testimonies such as the theater of Pietrabbondante in Molise, and that of Nocera Superiore on which the Romans built their own. The construction of the Samnite theaters of Pietrabbondante and Nocera make the architectural filiation of the Greek theater understood.
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