Rajala 2015: The perennial rivers and the changing settlement patterns on the two sides of the Tiber in central Italy – the case studies of Nepi and Gabii (original) (raw)
Related papers
River and Society in Northern Italy. The Po Valley, 500-1000 AD (Amsterdam: AUP, 2024)
2024
This book considers for the first time the relationship between the river environment and the economic and political structures of northern Italy in the post-Roman period. Through the study of the relationship between river and society over time, it shows how the Carolingian conquest and other major political events in northern Italy did not seem to introduce radical changes in the daily life or broad economic systems. In fact, ecological circuits, local networks, family strategies and monastic policies seem to have been equal factors that shaped the relationship between river and society. This monograph offers an innovative approach to the study of the early Middle Ages, integrating social sciences, historical records, archaeological and geoenvironmental data analyses to overcome the lack of written and material sources. These new integrated perspectives on the post-Roman world shed light on the relationship between humans and their environment and on the social complexity of the riverscape, topics not yet fully investigated in the historiographical debate.
Although studies of ancient landscapes have a long established tradition in mediterranean archaeology, one may observe in recent decades a definite break-through, encouraged in particular by the development of intensive field survey techniques. One of the merits of this trend is that it has allowed us to question traditional generalisations emphasizing uniformity in Graeco-Roman culture throughout the mediterranean basin. By stressing internal, and regionally specific, factors of change, the projects involved create the possibility of identifying variability in the dynamics of regional cultures and landscapes. However, the disadvantage of this approach is perhaps an overemphasis on regionally specific explanations. Whereas many regional data sets have become available in the last decennia, few attempts have yet been made to formulate new questions and syntheses on a supra-regional level (see notably Alcock 1994, Bintliff 1997). This is especially the case in Italy, notwithstanding the fact that the number of surveys here is comparatively large. To confront this issue, in 1997 three longstanding Dutch regional fieldwork projects joined forces to establish a new project aiming at a comparative analysis of centralizati-on and early urbanization processes in three regional landscapes in Central and Southern Italy. This umbrella project was named Regional Pathways to Complexity, Landscape and Settlement Dynamics in Early Italy - RPC project for short. It is carried out by the Archaeological Institutes of the Vrije Universiteit at Amsterdam (AIVU) and Groningen University (GIA), and is subsidized by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The Italian regions investigated are, from south to north, the Sibaritide in Calabria on the Ionian sea, the Salento Isthmus in Apulia on the Adriatic, and the Pontine Region in Sout-hern Lazio on the Tyrrhenian sea, south of Rome. This paper discusses the fieldwork in the Salento regio
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020
The Prospecting Boundaries project explores the Mazaro river corridor from a landscape archaeological perspective, using integrated prospection techniques to recover traces of past human activity and environmental contexts. One key research area is Guletta, a zone of dense multiperiod activity situated on the rocky plain above the river. In this paper, we detail results from recent work at Guletta, which has revealed numerous previously undocumented archaeological settlement features that appear to have been built in successive phases. Artifact analysis from corresponding surface survey indicates a mixture of locally produced and imported materials dating from the Middle Bronze to Archaic periods. Using these new results together with existing archaeological and environmental information, we present an initial interpretation of the occupation sequence of the settlement and explore the concept of Guletta as a connecting point between emerging indigenous, colonial, coastal, and interi...
Ol'Man River: geo- …, 2009
In this contribution, the coastal and fluvial dynamics in the Potenza river plain (the Marches, Italy) are discussed, with the spatial and temporal extension of their associated features, to the degree of detail possible with the evidence at hand; and with their implications on archaeological site formation in its broadest sense, though focused on the Roman period (2 nd century BCE-7 th century CE) and the roman city Potentia. The results, both concerning fluvial and coastal dynamics, could be fitted into the general story for the Marche region, as found in literature. The coast, starting off with an alternation of cliffs and bays during the Versilian transgression, was transformed into a beach barrier-lagoon system with a marine terrace at the base of the cliffs after the mid-Holocene, once the sea-level rise slowed down. Potentia was built on such a beach barrier. Behind the barriers, sediments were deposited, shaping the coastal plain in two distinct phases, one phase of land formation by deltaic fluvial infill, and a post-medieval phase with clay-deck formation by floods. The fluvial dynamics include river diversions, from a central position in the coastal plain started before the Bronze Age, via a Roman and medieval course debouching 0.5 km more to the north, to the present artificial course in the extreme north of the coastal plain. These alternations of the physical environment had their implications on the archaeological record, influencing amongst others: the location of the harbour of Potentia, the extension of the city towards the east, the implications for geoelectrical and geomagnetical survey, the form of the Roman road pattern, the impact on river management options and the choice of site locations for production.