Towards the end of the 8th century BC, the eastern coast of Calabria, southern Italy, began to be occupied by Greek settlements: along a coherent geographical path and in a short space of time, Sybaris, Kroton, Kaulonía, and Lokroi Epizephyrioi. On the Tyrrhenian coast, Lokroi itself gave birth to two new poleis.

The areas involved in these events were densely populated by indigenous settlements of different types, sizes, and levels of development. The archaeological data, even if fragmented, due to the different state of research and surveys, allow us to highlight the existence of a close series of phenomena of mobility that preceded the foundation of the Greek cities. These phenomena are exemplified by two types of dynamics: 1) the transfer of objects: 2) the transfer of elements of material culture. The results of these processes vary from one area to another, but in their general aspects they are very homogeneous. Above all, what seems to characterize all the above-mentioned areas and territories in the "pre-Greek" period is the great opportunity to host phenomena of mobility and the resulting dynamics, due to the absence of borders or the existence of borders very different from those of the "Greek" period. The narrative of the ancient sources on the pre-colonisation or prodromal phases seems to evoke these phenomena, distributing them along paths not yet fragmented by the existence of the poleis.

Myskellos of Rhype (Hippys FHG 554; Ps. Scymn. 323-325; D.S. VIII.17.1-2 e altri) is the oikistes of Kroton (D.S. VIII.17; Hippys FHG 554; Str. VI.1.12), but he intends to found Sybaris (D.S. VIII.17 .2), sailing from Delphi with Archias of Corinth, who will give birth to Syracuse (Thuc. VI.3.2), at the same time as Megara Hyblaea and Naxos (Str. VI.2.4); they will arrive at Kroton; from here Archias, on his way to Sicily, is said to have gone to Cape Zephyrion (Lokroi) before reaching Syracuse. There he finds a group of Dorians who have left the Megarians (founders of Megara Hyblaea); these Dorians will then join Archias in founding Syracuse (ibid.; Ps. Scymn. 276-277).

In this way, the circularity of the narrative seems to be the literary translation of phenomena of real mobility, partly exemplified by the dynamics of material culture.

This paper aims to explore the cultural and geographical relations of the Greek and indigenous centres of the Ionian and Tyrrhenian coasts of Calabria through the analysis of archaeological data and literary sources, trying to enucleate dynamics of structuring and re-structuring of routes and paths, mixing of people, objects, ideas and knowledge that originated before the apoikiai, and how they survived, if so, and functioned after the foundation of the poleis.