Roman Countryside (Classics)

Introduction

It is challenging to talk of a “Roman countryside” as if it were one homogeneous feature characterizing the wide geographical span of the Roman world. There are key elements that can be taken as being representative of the Roman countryside, for instance villas, land centuriation, and the road network, but the ancient countryside was much more varied than this and there was considerable regional diversity. The villa “system,” for instance, did not equally spread in every corner of the empire, and pastoralism, extraction activities, and manufacturing were all features of the Roman countryside alongside agricultural practices. The prevalence of one activity and mode of settlement over another was determined by regional topography, the natural resources available, the degree of urbanization, the role a region had in the overall administrative organization of the empire (for instance, whether taxation was extracted in kind), and its geographic position. Many important debates have unfolded around the Roman countryside: size of rural population and proportion of rural versus urban dwellers; type of settlements and the extent of continuity or disruption between Roman and pre-Roman periods (e.g., fortified hilltop villages versus farms and villas); type of land tenure, management, and labor; type of agricultural production and to what extent the ancient city lived “parasitically” exploiting the countryside; the list could go on. When discussing the Roman countryside it is obvious to start from Italy, and more precisely central Italy, the heart of Rome’s civilization, but it is necessary to distinguish between the elements and phases which constituted the “real” Roman countryside and the “idea” of a Roman countryside at home, and the processes in action in the provinces once Rome started to expand outside the Italian peninsula. Phenomena for a long time connected, in a more or less linear fashion, to the stages of Rome’s military expansion in the Italian peninsula, such as the appearance of farms and villas in central Italy, seem in fact to have been overarching phenomena disentangled from Rome’s annexation, since farms appeared at about the same time also in regions not yet conquered by Rome. But when considering provincial annexation in the late Republican and early imperial periods, land divisions and the appearance of farms largely producing surplus wine and olive oil are phenomena clearly observable in the archaeological record in regions such as Gallia, Baetica, and Tarraconensis. The incorporation into Rome’s empire here gave start to significant changes in the appearance of the countryside. The following sections aim at capturing the complexity of the Roman countryside and its regional diversity, while stressing those features that one would immediately associate with the idea of the Roman countryside. The approach taken in this bibliographical essay is to explore the ancient countryside mainly through the lens of archaeology. (Please see other related Oxford Bibliographies articles: Roman Archaeology, Roman Economy, etc.)

General Overviews

Dyson 2003 and Terrenato 2012 offer a clear introduction to the complexity of the debate surrounding the “Roman countryside” and focus on key themes, such as villas, roads, etc. Since Italy was the center of Roman political power and culture and in some of the new provinces Roman types of rural settlements appeared after annexation, any discussion of the Roman countryside starts with the Italian peninsula. Patterson 2006 does a very good job in discussing the diversity of the Italian landscape, which too often is presented as one homogeneous element, and the strengths and weaknesses of field survey (see also Field Surveys). The bibliography is rich and is a good starting point for further reading. Toynbee 1965, which emphasized the effects the Hannibalic War had on the transformation of the Italian landscape, has been an extremely influential study. Although many of Toynbee’s views are no longer accepted, it remains a “must-read” in order to understand the subsequent lines of research in the field. Recent years have seen considerable research on Italian settlement patterns and on the transformations that occurred in the countryside between the middle and late Republican periods and between the Republican and the imperial periods. Fioriello and Mangiatordi 2013 is an example of this kind of work for Apulia, a region thought to have been profoundly affected by the Roman conquest and the Hannibalic War. The article argues that no drastic change occurred; since other scholars reach different conclusions for neighboring areas, it is useful to read this article together with the items listed in its bibliography. Marxism is an important theoretical framework that has informed research on rural Roman Italy. Ancient slavery and the central role it occupies in the descriptions of the villas given by the Roman agronomists (Cato, Varro, and Columella) lent themselves well to being framed according to Marxist concepts such as “mode of production” and “class struggle.” Giardina and Schiavone 1981 is an example of the Italian Marxist school of thought applied to ancient history, while Carandini 1985 (cited under Villas and Farms) was influential in proposing the idea that key characteristics of the Roman villa were the slave mode of production and large estates which incorporated land previously owned by small farmers. Much field survey work carried out in central Italy after the South Etruria Survey (Potter 1979, cited under Field Surveys) was aimed at understanding whether, as presented in the ancient sources, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE Rome’s imperialism caused the disappearance of small and medium farms to the advantage of large estates. In this category one can place Carandini and Cambi 2002, the publication of the survey undertaken many years before in conjunction with the excavation at Settefinestre. Horden and Purcell 2000 proposes a historical paradigm in alternative to the longue durée articulated by Braudel in his seminal work on Mediterranean history. Horden and Purcell 2000 instead emphasizes the diversity of regional developments and the cases of clear break with the past. The book is not focused specifically on the Roman countryside, as it covers a wide chronological span and has as its focus the Mediterranean, which is seen as the connecting element among its micro-regions, but it has much to offer for the understanding of the complex interaction between humans and natural environment over a long timescale.

Carandini, Andrea, and Franco Cambi, eds. 2002. Paesaggi d’Etruria: Valle dell’Albegna, Valle d’Oro, Valle del Chiarone, Valle del Tafone; progetto di ricerca italo-britannico seguito allo scavo di Settefinestre. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
There was a notable delay in the publication of this volume, but the book is of interest because the results highlight the differences in villa size between coastal and inland Etruria. To be consulted together with the review by A. I. Wilson, JRA 17.2 (2004): 569–76.
Find this resource:
Dyson, Stephen L. 2003. The Roman countryside. Duckworth Debates in Archaeology. London: Duckworth.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A slim and very accessible book, it is a useful introduction, suitable for students, to various themes, methods, and types of evidence that have occupied the debate on the Roman countryside.
Find this resource:
Fioriello, Custode S., and Anna Mangiatordi. 2013. Urban and rural Roman landscapes of central Apulia. Journal of Roman Archaeology 26.1: 143–166.
DOI: 10.1017/S104775941300010XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A synthesis of more extensive work published by the authors in Italian, covering the 3rd c. BCE–4th c. CE period. Against Toynbee it argues that no clear impact on rural settlements or on the dynamics of production/consumption is discernible in the aftermath of the Hannibalic War.
Find this resource:
Giardina, Andrea, and Aldo Schiavone, eds. 1981. Società romana e produzione schiavistica. 3 vols. Bari, Italy: Laterza.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This has been a very important work for all historians and archaeologists interested in ancient Italy, regardless of its Marxist framework. Volume 1, on the agricultural systems of Roman Italy, has several influential essays, such as Giardina’s on pastoralism and Manacorda’s on landowners, agriculture, and ceramic production in the ager Cosanus.
Find this resource:
Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. 2000. The corrupting sea: A study of Mediterranean history. Oxford: Blackwell.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It argues that there were notable differences in the rural developments of different areas of the Roman Empire and proposes the need for a historical ecology of the Mediterranean. It examines Mediterranean history and the interactions between humans and natural environment over a long timescale.
Find this resource:
Patterson, John R. 2006. The rural landscapes of imperial Italy. In Landscapes and cities: Rural settlement and civic transformation in early imperial Italy. Edited by John R. Patterson, 5–88. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198140887.003.0002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It offers an overview, suitable for graduate students, of the diversity of the Italian landscape, field survey methodologies, migration, models of rural settlement, etc. The discussion of settlement trends is valuable, as is the appendix presenting, in summary form, the data for settlement patterns derived from a selection of surveys.
Find this resource:
Terrenato, Nicola. 2012. The essential countryside (b): The Roman world. In Classical archaeology. Rev. 2d ed. Edited by Susan E. Alcock and Robin Osborne, 144–167. Oxford: Blackwell.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This chapter is the revised second edition of the 2007 publication and offers a clear introduction, suitable for undergraduate students, to the complexity of the debate surrounding the “Roman countryside.”
Find this resource:
Toynbee, Arnold, J. 1965. Hannibal’s legacy: The Hannibalic War’s effects on Roman life. 2 vols. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Seminal work on the devastating consequences of the Hannibalic War on the Roman economic, social, and military spheres. The aftermath of the war is treated in Volume 2. It had considerable influence on ancient history studies and on how Italian settlement patterns recovered through field survey have been interpreted.
Find this resource:
Field Surveys

Field surveys have contributed greatly to the knowledge of the ancient territory and gathered a large amount of archaeological data on rural settlement patterns and chronological trends. Survey data have largely been used in the debate on ancient demography, trying to infer population size on the basis of the number and type of rural settlements, and on type of land tenure (farms owned by free farmers versus larger properties employing slave labor). The methodological problems posed by the comparison of data from different surveys, which may have used different categories and classifying criteria, is clearly discussed in Osborne 2004. The effectiveness of field survey as an investigative tool depends on the type of terrain: relying on teams of people walking through transects at regular intervals and noting what is visible on the ground, it is most effective in plowed fields and less so in areas with dense vegetation. The South Etruria Survey, directed by Ward Perkins from the 1950s to the 1970s in the region north of Rome, was the first case of intensive and large-scale survey conducted in the Mediterranean regions and became a milestone in Mediterranean archaeology. Part of the data of this project was synthesized in Potter 1979. However, one of the problems at the time was that pottery studies had not yet developed chronological sequences sufficiently refined and this affected the dating of sites, which was based on the recovered pottery sherds. Pottery studies have now developed more sophisticated chronological classifications, and the South Etruria Survey data, never fully published, have been revaluated by the Tiber Valley Project. Preliminary results can be found in Patterson, et al. 2004. Another seminal survey project conducted in Italy was the Biferno Valley Project, which studied the long-term history of a geographically defined region chosen for its relative isolation from Rome and orientation to pastoralism rather than arable agriculture (Barker 1995a and Barker 1995b). The importance of focusing on new research issues, which can make field survey a more powerful analytical tool for the study of a given territory rather than simply focusing on occupational processes, was brought to the fore by Witcher 2006 (this should be read together with Witcher 2011). The most recent and stimulating study using field survey data to advance the debate on the size of the population of Roman Italy and the alleged diffusion of slave-staffed large villa estates to the disadvantage of the small and medium free farmers is Launaro 2011. The broader conclusions reached by Launaro (that, with very limited exceptions, the appearance of larger villas did not cause the disappearance of small and medium farms) have important implications for the sociopolitical history of Republican Rome.

Barker, Graeme. 1995a. A Mediterranean valley: Landscape archaeology and Annales history in the Biferno Valley. London: Leicester Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It presents the analysis of the survey data and reconstructs the history of this territory and the type of interactions between humans and the natural environment from prehistoric time to the modern period. While it was not conceived as a textbook, it has become a classic read for classical archaeology students. With major contributions by Richard Hodges, Gillian Clark, et al.
Find this resource:
Barker, Graeme, ed. 1995b. The Biferno Valley Survey: The archaeological and geomorphological record. London: Leicester Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This volume is, in fact, the second volume of the above study; it presents the data gathered in the survey, the gazetteer of sites, the maps, finds, and specialist reports on faunal taxa.
Find this resource:
Launaro, Alessandro. 2011. Peasants and slaves: The rural population of Roman Italy (200 BC to AD 100). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is an excellent example of how data from field surveys conducted in Italy can be used effectively in ancient history. A systematic review of the literature is coupled with discussion of primary sources and archaeological data from across the Italian peninsula. It is advanced reading for specialists and graduate students already familiar with the issues.
Find this resource:
Osborne, Robin. 2004. Demography and survey. In Side-by-side survey: Comparative regional studies in the Mediterranean world. Edited by Susan E. Alcock and John F. Cherry, 163–172. Oxford: Oxbow.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It clearly explains the limitations survey data present when trying to reconstruct the size of the ancient population. It is an excellent introduction to the problematic relationship between survey data and historical reconstruction and as such is suitable for both classical archaeology and ancient history students.
Find this resource:
Patterson, H., Helga Di Giuseppe, and Robert Witcher. 2004. Three south Etrurian “crises”: First results of the Tiber Valley Project. Papers of the British School at Rome 72:1–36.
DOI: 10.1017/S0068246200002658Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The three case studies pertain to periods traditionally considered of crisis (the 5th/4th centuries BCE, the 2nd century BCE, and the late antique/early medieval periods); the reevaluation of the data offers significant modifications to Potter 1979 and shows different degrees of continuity and change in the history of rural settlements.
Find this resource:
Potter, T. W. 1979. The changing landscape of south Etruria. London: Paul Elek.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The only interpretation of the data gathered in the South Etruria Survey completed shortly after the end of the project, it is still an important work for the history of the Roman Italian countryside, describing the intense diffusion of villas and farms as Rome’s territory expanded in the Republic.
Find this resource:
Witcher, Robert. 2006. Broken pots and meaningless dots? Surveying the rural landscapes of Roman Italy. Papers of the British School at Rome 74:39–72.
DOI: 10.1017/S0068246200003226Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The article challenges practices in field survey studies, which are seen as limited to a narrow range of historical questions. While field survey as method for the study of the ancient landscape is very popular and much attention was given to developing methodological frameworks, Witcher argues that theory and interpretation have been ignored.
Find this resource:
Witcher, Robert. 2011. Missing persons? Models of Mediterranean regional survey and ancient populations. In Settlement, urbanization, and population. Edited by Alan K. Bowman and Andrew I. Wilson, 36–75. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602353.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
By focusing specifically on the demographic debate, it discusses the effects of recovery rates in field survey on our understanding of Greek and Roman societies; it is an important reading for those interested in methodological problems and in the correlation between archaeological practice and historical reconstruction.
Find this resource:
Regional Studies

Regional studies are important in providing a nuanced understating of the Roman countryside and its relationship with the earlier and later scenarios. There is still considerable disparity in the extent and quality of regional studies; from the point of view of surveying and recording of rural settlements and infrastructure, the western provinces of the Roman Empire and some parts of North Africa have been more systematically studied than the East. Determining the extent of investment in the production of agricultural surplus in the Roman period has been central to many regional studies, such as Hitchner 1988 and Hitchner 1989, which remain key studies for the intensification of settlements devoted largely to olive oil production in the Kasserine region of modern Tunisia and for the evidence of a type of rural settlement hierarchy which did not feature the “villa” as we see it in Italy, France, or Spain. Large portions of the pre-desert area of North Africa show archaeological evidence for dense Roman settlement and for a long time scholars have variously explained the phenomenon (e.g., environmental change, colonization, market forces), but without having hard data to evaluate these various theories. Barker 1996– was the first detailed interdisciplinary study, including archaeologists, geographers, and historians, which aimed at offering scientific data on the nature of settlement, land use, and the contemporary climate and environment. The methodologies used in this project for studying the archaeology of arid-zone agriculture have set an example internationally. Mattingly 1988 used regional field survey results to argue for the large-scale surplus production of olive oil in some regions of the empire. Fiches, et al. 2013 is the latest example of studies focusing on Iberia and Gaul (both regions are well known archeologically) using the data to reconstruct the historical geography of a rural territory. Frere and St. Joseph 1983 shows the potential, for regional study, of a different type of source: aerial photography. From the late 1990s, large-scale regional studies have been undertaken also in areas of the Roman world previously neglected. Oltean 2007 is based on the first aerial reconnaissance program launched exclusively for archaeological purposes (1998–2004) and aimed at understanding how Roman civilization impacted on native cultures. Thonemann 2011 offers a different approach, using the framework of historical geography. This work makes an important contribution to regional studies for Asia Minor in the Roman and Byzantine periods by offering a long-term examination of a well-defined geographical feature, the Menander Valley.

Barker, Graeme, ed. 1996–. Farming the desert: The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey. Paris: UNESCO.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This interdisciplinary study focused on the basins of the Wadis Sofeggin and ZemZem in Tripolitania. This work has transformed our understanding of how the desert margins were farmed in Antiquity, revealing the extent of human intervention on the landscape and the long-term success or failure of the strategies used to manage the processes of desertification.
Find this resource:
Fiches, Jean-Luc, Rosa Plana-Mallart, and Victor Revilla Calvo, eds. 2013. Paysages ruraux et territoires dans les cités de l’occident romain: Gallia et Hispania; actes du Colloque International Ager IX, Barcelone, 25–27 mars 2010. Collection Mondes Anciens. Montpellier, France: Presses Univ. de la Méditerranée.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Contributions investigate the spatial and territorial dimension of the rural landscape, the settlement types, and the utilization of the natural resources in the light of recent research projects. They focus on the major and better-known regions of the Iberian Peninsula and Gaul, incorporating into the discussion paleoenvironmental, paleobotanical, and zooarchaeological data.
Find this resource:
Frere, Sheppard Sunderland, and John Kenneth Sinclair St. Joseph. 1983. Roman Britain from the air. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The book, which features several aerial photographs, is useful for students and scholars of Roman Britain, since in some cases the landscape changed considerably. Each site is accompanied by a commentary to the photographs. The introductory section to each of the thirteen chapters relates the sites to their historical and archaeological context.
Find this resource:
Hitchner, R. Bruce. 1988. The Kasserine archaeological survey, 1982–1986. Antiquités africaines 24:7–41.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It suggests that the incorporation of the region into the Roman Empire resulted in an increase in agriculturally based settlements. The causes for this change may be linked to the foundation of urban settlements in the region in the 1st century CE and the introduction of the olive as a cash crop.
Find this resource:
Hitchner, R. Bruce. 1989. The organisation of rural settlement in the Cillium-Thelepte region. L’Africa Romana 6:387–402.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The data discussed indicate a type of settlement hierarchy made of urban agglomeration, village, large farm, and farm, and the existence of extensive field irrigation systems associated with these settlements. It also shows that some pre-Roman habitational patterns survived into the Roman period and the Roman agricultural boom was based on indigenous dry-farming technology.
Find this resource:
Mattingly, David J. 1988. Oil for export? A comparison of Libyan, Spanish, and Tunisian olive oil production in the Roman Empire. Journal of Roman Archaeology 1:33–56.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It compares field survey data from three oil-producing regions and attempts a quantification of potential production on the basis of the number of presses/km2. It is a good example of the approaches to use when dealing with a given set of archaeological data in order to answer larger historical questions.
Find this resource:
Oltean, Ioana A. 2007. Dacia: Landscape, colonisation, romanisation. Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies. London and New York: Routledge.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It is often said that Dacia was quickly and deeply Romanized because it was sparsely inhabited; therefore, this book, in order to assess the nature of Romanization in the region, analyzes Roman-native interaction from a landscape perspective, focusing on both Iron Age and Roman Dacia.
Find this resource:
Thonemann, Peter. 2011. The Maeander Valley: A historical geography from Antiquity to Byzantium. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511974847Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
For the attention given to the role played by geography in human history, it can be placed among works inspired by Horden and Purcell 2000 (cited under General Overviews). Despite the focus on a definite geographic region, it makes a fundamental contribution to the history of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Find this resource:
Centuriation and Colonization

Centuriation, or centuriatio in Latin, refers to the division of land in regular rectangular plots limited by orthogonal roads/boundaries that was typical of the Roman world (but not exclusive: use of regular cadastres was known in the Greek world), particularly in association with military conquest of new territories, foundation of colonies, and distribution of land to military veterans. Studies on Roman cadastres and their survival in the modern landscape were made possible after World War II, when aerial photographs taken for military purposes became available to archaeologists and topographers, revealing the regular land divisions of many regions. Landmark early studies using aerial photography to identify ancient settlements include Baradez 1949, which also identified the Roman frontier line, known as the Fossatum Africae, constituted by a ditch, a wall, and a series of forts, and Bradford 1957. The five-volume series Misurare la terra: Centuriazione e coloni nel mondo romano presents topographical studies by a number of experts of Roman centuriation and archaeological material for Rome’s suburbium and three regions of Italy where centuriation connected to the foundation of colonies in the Republican period is most evident: the Veneto region and the areas of Modena and Mantova. A discussion on centuriation, cadasters, and methods used by the Roman land surveyors, including also the provincial world, can be found in Chouquer and Favory 1991. Most recent regional studies investigating rural settlements and centuriation in a provincial context include Prevosti and Guitart i Duran 2010, a comprehensive study of the territory of ancient Tarragona which takes into account a large archaeological dataset. The extant primary sources on Roman centuriation (the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanarum) are collected, translated, and commented in Campbell 2000. Gonzalès and Guillaumin 2006 offers interesting discussion of an important and problematic source for the foundation of Roman colonies, the Libri coloniarium, and complements the analysis of colonization with the discussion of several case studies from outside the Italian peninsula. While for the western provinces much work has been done on Roman colonization, the eastern provinces have legged behind. Rizakis 2004 discusses the relationship between the indications found in the land surveyors’ treatises about colonial foundations, particularly in relation to the Greek world.

Baradez, Jean Lucien. 1949. Vue-aérienne de l’organisation romaine dans le Sud-Algérien: Fossatum Africae. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A historical example of use of aerial photography to study the ancient landscape. The book is still very valuable as a research tool for its photos and maps, which document many features that have since disappeared from the landscape.
Find this resource:
Bradford, John. 1957. Ancient landscapes: Studies in field archaeology. London: G. Bell.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Influential study on the contribution of aerial photography to the study of historical landscapes. Chapter 1 (pp. 59–84) is a clear introduction to technical aspects of aerial interpretation; the other four chapters cover specific examples, ranging from reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes to classical and medieval town plans. Chapter 4, on centuriated landscapes, is particularly valuable (pp. 145–216).
Find this resource:
Campbell, J. Brian. 2000. The writings of the Roman land surveyors: Introduction, text, translation and commentary. Journal of Roman Studies Monograph 9. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The only publication of these difficult texts with English translation and commentary; it is an invaluable reference tool for those with interests in ancient technology, science, and ancient history in general.
Find this resource:
Chouquer, Gérard, and François Favory. 1991. Les paysages de l’antiquité: Terres et cadastres de l’Occident romain (IVe s. avant J.-C./IIIe s. après J.-C.). Paris: Errance.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This study addresses many more topics than the title might suggest and is a comprehensive introduction to the different disciplines and methods involved in the study of the ancient territory and its use. Case studies include discussion of the famous Cadastres of Orange and other examples.
Find this resource:
Gonzalès, Antonio, and Jean-Yves Guillaumin, eds. 2006. Autour des “libri coloniarum”: Colonisation et colonies dans le monde romain; actes du Colloque International (Besançon, 16–18 octobre 2003). Besançon, France: Presses Univ. de Franche-Comté.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
These conference proceedings address two main themes: the genesis of the Libri coloniarum and their role as important source for the framework of Italian colonies and the place this ancient text has in the land-surveying literary production. Case studies from outside Italy integrate the discussion of the textual evidence.
Find this resource:
Misurare la terra: Centuriazione e coloni nel mondo romano. 1983–1986. 5 vols. Modena, Italy: Edizioni Panini.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A series of five books, edited by different authors, published between 1983 and 1986 and based on an archaeological exhibition on colonization and centuriation in Roman Italy. It makes accessible otherwise unpublished archaeological material and remains a valuable reference work for Roman Italy.
Find this resource:
Prevosti, Marta, and Josep Guitart i Duran, eds. 2010. Ager tarraconensis 1: Aspectes històrics i marc natural. Tarragona, Spain: ICAC.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Tarraco (Tarragona) was the Roman provincial capital of Hispania Citerior and field survey projects have investigated the relationship between the city, its hinterland, and the settlement of colonists. This book, with contributions in Catalan (three chapters also have English translations) is the latest compilation and analysis of a vast archaeological dataset.
Find this resource:
Rizakis, Athanasios D. 2004. La littérature gromatique et la colonisation romaine en Orient. In Colonie romane nel mondo Greco. Edited by Giovanni Salmeri, Andrea Raggi, and Anselmo Baroni, 69–94. Rome: L’Erma di Bretscheneider
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses how the concepts found in the gromatic literature are also present in the colonial foundations of the Roman east and how colonization dramatically changed landholding patterns and the juridical and sociopolitical rights of the local populations. Much of the discussion has value for the investigation of the topic of colonization in general.
Find this resource:
Villas and Farms

Villas and farms were typical features of the countryside for many parts of the Roman world. The bibliography on Roman villas is vast, ranging from architectural to socioeconomic studies. Farms are rarely excavated and are discussed mostly as settlement category in the context of field survey. Mielsch 1990 offers a comprehensive clear introduction to the Roman villa as seat for production and the pursuit of a Hellenized lifestyle. Smith 1997, based on the assumption that villa plans reflect the relations between the various groups that inhabited them and the various classes comprising a society, analyzes plans of buildings of all sizes to argue that all houses were occupied by groups of varying composition. For the Iberian Peninsula, where villas had considerable diffusion, Gorges 1979 is still useful, although in part outdated, as it synthesizes a large corpus of data on villas in order to infer general trends. Lafon 2001 is fundamental for understanding the development of maritime villas in Roman Italy. Ghisleni, et al. 2011 presents preliminary results of a project aimed rectifying the imbalance in our knowledge concerning small farms by carrying out systematic investigation of the smallest sites found in field survey. The issue of rural property size and production of agricultural surplus is important, especially for 2nd-century Italy, when amphora finds attest large exports of wine, but the type of wine-producing settlements known are of the farm type rather than the villa. Terrenato 2001 deals with such issues and has argued, on the basis of the discovery of an archaic villa-palace at the Auditorium site in Rome, that the Etruscan rural palatial structures should be seen as the antecedent of the later Roman villas. An important theme connected to the diffusion of villas and the type of land tenure is that of slavery. Much scholarly production in the past has put emphasis on the villa system and on the “slave mode of production.” Carandini 1985 has been extremely influential in this sense, both in guiding the interpretation of the archaeology at other villa sites and in supporting a type of historical reconstruction based on ancient written sources which emphasized the creation of large, slave staffed estate to the disadvantage of small and medium free landlords. Marzano 2007 has reacted to the idea that slave-staffed plantation-like estates were prevalent in these regions, pointing out that the evidence for presumed slave quarters at Settefinestre is open to alternative interpretations.

Carandini, Andrea, ed. 1985. Settefinestre: Una villa schiavistica nell’Etruria romana. Modena, Italy: Edizioni Panini.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Publication, in three volumes, of the Settefinestre villa. As this is to date the only Roman villa excavated in its entirety in Italy and since the site was backfilled, the publication is of fundamental importance. This site has become the archaeological proof of the diffusion of large slave-staffed villas and of the displacement of small farmers.
Find this resource:
Ghisleni, Mariaelena, Emanuele Vaccaro, and Kim Bowes. 2011. Excavating the Roman peasant, I: Excavations at Pievina (Gr). Papers of the British School at Rome 79:95–145.
DOI: 10.1017/S0068246211000067Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Interim results of an archaeological project on small farms, which looks at diet, economies, land use, and landscapes of the Roman peasant. These results suggest a more complex image of Roman peasant life than current assumptions would anticipate, including surplus production, a high degree of monetization, and ties to urban markets.
Find this resource:
Gorges, Jean-Gérard. 1979. Les villas hispano-romaines: Inventaire et problématique archéologiques. Paris: E. de Boccard.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Still the only comprehensive examination of villas in Iberia which discusses general trends, such as a high concentration of villas in Catalonia already in the late Republican period and the rapid spread of medium- and large-sized villas in the Guadalquivir and Ebro Valleys in the early empire.
Find this resource:
Lafon, Xavier. 2001. Villa maritima: Recherches sur les villas littorales de l’Italie romaine (IIIe siècle av. J. -C./IIIe siècle ap. J.-C.). Rome: Ecole française de Rome.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed study of maritime villas of Italy, which builds upon earlier work by the same author. The main focus is on architecture, but there is much interesting discussion also on the social and productive aspects of villas.
Find this resource:
Marzano, Annalisa. 2007. Roman villas in central Italy: A social and economic history. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It examines a large corpus of villas sites known archaeologically (496 sites) against literary and epigraphic sources in order to contrast the “idea” of villa present in the Roman elite imagination with what the archaeological evidence indicates about how these structures were used.
Find this resource:
Mielsch, Harald. 1990. La villa romana. Translated by Anna Maria Esposito. Florence, Italy: Giunti.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Italian translation of Die römische Villa: Architektur und Lebensform (1987). It discusses villas from different points of view. The content is accessible and suitable for students. The value of this edition compared to the original German one is a useful archaeological gazetteer of villas compiled by Gianluca Tagliamonte.
Find this resource:
Smith, John Thomas. 1997. Roman villas: A study in social structure. London: Routledge.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The book is a meticulous examination of the relationship between living quarters and their social and economic development. The inclusion of almost 500 ground plans of different types of rural buildings, drawn to a uniform scale, is a very useful resource for students and scholars alike.
Find this resource:
Terrenato, Nicola. 2001. The auditorium site in Rome and the origins of the villa. Journal of Roman Archaeology 14:5–32.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The question of the origin of the Roman villa, both as architectural form and as specific mode of agricultural exploitation, is debated; it argues that the palatial structures known for early Etruria and ancient Latium are the antecedent of the “villa” and not the Hellenistic farms of Magna Graecia.
Find this resource:
Latifundia

Although by the early imperial period it had become proverbial to lament that latifundia or large estates had ruined Italy (e.g., Pliny, Naturalis Historia 18.35), scholars have long debated whether the term is used in texts generically or as a technical term. White 1967 discusses the literary attestations of the term largely dating to the 1st century CE. Much attention has been given to trying to determine the size an estate needed to be in order to be called latifundium. Kuziščin 1984 argued that 250 ha was the minimum size that qualified an estate as latifundium, and field survey in the territory of Cosa (Carandini and Cambi 2002) seems to indicate that the estates attached to the large villas measured on average 250–300 ha. Because in the Republican period Rome’s urban proletariat was swollen by impoverished small farmers, the emergence of large estates in Italy has been seen as the cause of the disappearance of small farms. In the past, research on Roman latifundia in Italy has been partly conditioned by much later historical realities, such as the large estates of 19th-century Sicily, characterized by underdevelopment and poor management and labor conditions, and to this topic are devoted the papers in CNRS—Université de Bordeaux III 1995. In most cases, the “large” estates of the Roman wealthy were not one contiguous property, but several scattered ones in different locations. Geographic areas of the Roman world where latifudia, many belonging to the imperial family, existed were North Africa/Egypt and Asia Minor. Kehoe 2007 investigates the development of legislation governing land tenure and the contractual relations between landowners and tenant farmers employed on the imperial estates of North Africa. In the later Roman Empire, along with imperial and elite ownership, the Church also became a great landowner. A well-known case of late antique large estate from Egypt, thanks to the survival of its documentary archive spanning from the 5th to the early 7th century CE, concerns the properties of the Flavii Apiones. This archive has been central to the discussion of the changes that took place in Late Antiquity in relation to property and labor management and offered the model for the nature of aristocratic landholding in the Byzantine East as a whole. Hickey 2012 argues strongly for revising this model, and, by extension, the reconstructions of late antique economy and society based on it.

Carandini, Andrea, and Franco Cambi, eds. 2002. Paesaggi d’Etruria: Valle dell’Albegna, Valle d’Oro, Valle del Chiarone, Valle del Tafone; progetto di ricerca italo-britannico seguito allo scavo di Settefinestre. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It presents the results of the field survey carried out in the context of the Settefinestre excavation. It is an important study for the understanding of the occupational history of this region and to fully contextualize the elite villas of the territory, such as Settefinestre (Carandini 1985, cited under Villas and Farms).
Find this resource:
CNRS—Université de Bordeaux III. 1995. Du latifundium au latifondo: Un héritage de Rome, une création médiévale ou moderne? Actes de la table ronde internationale du CNRS organisée à l’Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux III les 17–19 décembre 1992. Paris: Publications du Centre Pierre Paris.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
These conference proceedings cover several aspects connected to the study of the latifundium and its eventual relationship with the large estates of modern times. The contributions, in French and Italian, span from discussion of the archaeological evidence to the historical interpretation of the type of land management of the Roman and medieval periods.
Find this resource:
Hickey, Todd M. 2012. Wine, wealth, and the state in late antique Egypt: The House of Apion at Oxyrhynchus. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In response to a 2006 study by Sarris, Hickey on the contrary argues that most of the estate’s revenues came from rents from tenants; marketing of agricultural surplus from direct cultivation is improbable. These conclusions have important implications for the current understanding of the late antique economy.
Find this resource:
Kehoe, Dennis P. 2007. Law and the rural economy in the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the institutional environment, particularly legislation and rules governing the relationship between big landowners and tenants. It uses the framework of New Institutional Economics and argues that law was relevant to large part of the rural population. It shows that Roman legislation aimed at mediating legal conflicts by encouraging long-term relationships between landowners and tenants.
Find this resource:
Kuziščin, Vasilij Ivanovič. 1984. La grande proprietà agraria nell’Italia romana. Translated by Salvatore Arcella. Rome: Editori Riuniti.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focuses on Italy and the question of the emergence of large estates based on slave labor following Rome’s military expansion in the Mediterranean; it has influenced much later historiography, especially in Italy. It is, therefore, important to know it directly in order to understand the history of the discipline.
Find this resource:
White, K. D. 1967. Latifundia: A critical review of the evidence on large estates in Italy and Sicily up to the end of the first century A.D. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London 14:62–79.
DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-5370.1967.tb00048.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A useful article which discusses the literary, epigraphic, legal, and archaeological evidence. Since its main focus is the socioeconomic background of the Gracchan Land Bill, the discussion is limited to the question of the emergence of large estates in Italy and Sicily.
Find this resource:
Villages: Vici and Pagi

The countryside was obviously not simply occupied by farms and villas or unsettled areas (forests, marshes, etc.) but also by villages (vici) organized into administrative districts (pagi). A scholarly tradition going back to A. Schulten in the 19th century has seen in the pagus an element of pre-Roman rural structures which was transformed during Rome’s conquest to reflect a rural district in the context of Roman territorial administration. Our understanding of vici and pagi has made notable progress with the publication of two books in 2002, which investigated vici and pagi from a juridical and administrative point of view; these studies reached opposite conclusions. Capogrossi Colognesi 2002 inverted Schulten’s tenet and argued that the pagus was not a pre-Roman element but an organizational element well integrated into the Roman municipal system. Its main role was to offer, from the organizational and administrative point of view, support to towns. In Capogrossi’s opinion, the vicus was in fact the pre-Roman element typical of the indigenous population of Apennine Italy such as the Sabellians. Tarpin 2002 considers that the vici were not indigenous settlements but administrative structures established by the Roman authority in specific places for specific population categories (p. 85). Since archaeologically there are very few cases of excavations of villages, the bulk of the evidence used to study vici and pagi are juridical texts, literary sources, the technical treatises of agronomists and land surveyors, and inscriptions. The article Beltrán Lloris 2006 (cited under Aqueducts and Water Supply) presents an important inscription which sheds light on aspects of pagus life and organization. A key ancient passage is Festus’ definition of vicus (502–508 L.), a text that presents an initial lacuna and textual problems; Letta 2005 deals with this problem and suggests integration to the text, independently proposed also by Todisco 2006. Arthur 2004 offers a survey of late antique vici in Italy, with emphasis on the very different regional situations of the peninsula.

Arthur, Paul. 2004. From vicus to village: Italian landscapes, AD 400–1000. In Landscapes of change: Rural evolutions in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Edited by Neil Christie, 103–133. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It discusses the late antique vicus, a private, ecclesiastical, or state-run establishment, which controlled agricultural productivity and channeled surplus and the difficulty to class the settlements under one category of vicus. The relationship between vicus and the medieval villages is explored with reference to various Italian examples.
Find this resource:
Capogrossi Colognesi, Luigi. 2002. Persistenza e innovazione nelle strutture territoriali dell’Italia romana: L’ambiguità di una interpretazione storiografica e dei suoi modelli. Naples, Italy: Jovene.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The focus of this study is Roman Italy and the evolution in its territorial organization. Consequently, part of the discussion also deals with centuriation and land division. Chapters 3 and 5, on Mommsen’s and Schilten’s heritage and on modern interpretations of ancient sources, are a very useful survey of the history of the discipline.
Find this resource:
Letta, Cesare. 2005. Vicus rurale e vicus urbano nella definizione di Festo (502 e 508 L.). Rivista di cul Classica e Medievale 47:81–96.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The article deals with Festus’ passages where the definition of vicus is given. It is an important but difficult source, complicated by a textual lacuna at a key point. Letta discusses the legal aspects connected to Festus’ definition and proposes an integration for the lacuna.
Find this resource:
Tarpin, Michel. 2002. Vici et pagi dans l’Occident romain (CEFR 299). Rome: École française de Rome.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It covers in detail all aspects related to vici and pagi. The starting focus is Roman Italy, but the discussion extends also outside Italy, investigating the vicus as an indicator of Roman imperialist interests abroad. A catalogue of inscriptions related to vici and to pagi is a useful research tool.
Find this resource:
Todisco, Elisabetta. 2006. Sulla glossa ‘vici’ nel De verborum significatu di Festo: La struttura del testo. In Gli statuti municipali. Edited by Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi and Emilio Gabba, 605–614. Pavia, Italy: Multimedia Cardano.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A very close reading and analysis of Festus’ passages giving a definition of vicus; it independently reaches the same conclusion of Letta 2005.
Find this resource:
Agricultural Production

In a preindustrial society as Rome’s, the countryside was eminently the place for agricultural production. The merit of many regional survey projects has been to reveal an overall trend toward increased agricultural production in many parts of the Roman Empire. Wine and olive oil, together with wheat, were the major crops grown as cash crops, and for certain regions of the Roman Empire Roman rule coincided with the diffusion of intensive viticulture or oleiculture. Brun 2004 presents a synthesis of archaeological data about wine and oil production organized by region of the empire. Such intensification in some areas was clearly connected to the foundation of colonies and the arrival of settlers from Italy. Brun 2005 offers an overview of such trends for Gaul. Other geographic areas where a combination of field survey, study of amphorae, and limited excavations have revealed the extent of agricultural production occurring in the Roman period are Spain and North Africa. For the latter, the work of Hitchner (see Regional Studies) in surveying the internal region of Tunisia and recording installations for oil production is of fundamental importance, as is De Vos 2013 on the rural landscape and the Roman farms of the middle Medjerda Valley of the High Tell of Tunisia. Peña Cervantes 2010 is currently the most comprehensive study on the archaeological evidence for wine or olive production in Iberia. Although the most important cash crops were olives, grape, and grain, it ought to be remembered that ancient estates always practiced polyculture in combination with animal husbandry: Kron 2008 has proposed that these features allowed even small farmers to be commercially competitive. White 1967 remains the standard reference work on the agricultural implements in use in the Roman world. The question of how much money elite could make from agriculture has been addressed in Rosenstein 2008. Focusing on Republican aristocrats, it argues that potential producers of wine, wheat, etc. were many in 1st- and 2nd-century-BCE Italy and that Italian urban population could not have provided a market large enough to enable each of them to derive a substantial income from producing agricultural surplus.

Brun, Jean-Pierre. 2004. Archéologie du vin et de l’huile dan l’Empire romain. Paris: Errance.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It offers an overview of a myriad of surveys and excavations across the empire and is a very good starting point before reading about each region in depth. One caveat: since Brun 2004 and Brun 2005 were conceived as a series, the bibliography has been published only in the 2005 volume as one consolidated bibliography.
Find this resource:
Brun, Jean-Pierre. 2005. Archéologie du vin et de l’huile en Gaule romaine. Paris: Errance.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It discusses archaeological data accumulated in years of rescue archaeology and research projects. It offers a very good overview of production facilities discovered at rural sites, their technical specifications, and the production of the amphorae used to transport wine and olive oil.
Find this resource:
De Vos, Mariette. 2013. The rural landscape of Thugga: Farms, presses, mills, and transport. In The Roman agricultural economy: Organization, investment, and production. Edited by Alan I. Bowman and Andrew I. Wilson, 143–218. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199665723.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It presents the results of recent field survey project in the region of Thugga and draws some comparisons with recent survey work in Algeria. The data show a clear intensification of settlements with agricultural processing facilities of the Roman and late antique periods.
Find this resource:
Kron, Geoffrey. 2008. The much maligned peasant: Comparative perspectives on the productivity of the small farmer in classical Antiquity. In People, land, and politics: Demographic developments and the transformation of Roman Italy 300 BC-AD 14. Edited by Luuk De Ligt and Simon J. Northwood, 71–119. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004171183.i-656Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Against the idea that ancient small and medium farmers barely managed to be self-sufficient, Kron combines the discussion of the agricultural techniques found in the agronomists with comparative data to argue for the competitiveness of small farmers on the market.
Find this resource:
Peña Cervantes, Yolanda. 2010. Torcularia: La produccíon de vino y aceite en Hispania (Documenta 14). Tarragona, Spain: Istitut Català de Arqueologia Clàssica.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A strictly archaeological study, based on a doctoral thesis. It is suitable for scholars and advanced PhD students; because it collects a large dataset is a useful resource for those working on settlements and agricultural production of Roman Iberia and for those interested in the typology of Roman presses.
Find this resource:
Rosenstein, Nathan S. 2008. Aristocrats and agriculture in the middle and late Republic. Journal of Roman Studies 98:1–26.
DOI: 10.3815/007543508786239238Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This study approaches the question of elite income from agriculture from the perspective of supply rather than demand. The conclusions reached are that agriculture is not likely to have provided the economic basis for most senators’ lifestyles. Investment in land was guided by social considerations and prestige rather than economic factors.
Find this resource:
White, Kenneth D. 1967. Agricultural implements of the Roman world. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Useful reference work on both manual tools and agricultural machines. For every implement the ancient name is given, as are references to literary texts, iconographic representations, and archaeological examples, along with explanations of usage. It is the standard point of departure for students and scholars alike interested in the practical side of agriculture.
Find this resource:
Animal Husbandry and Pastoralism

Animal rearing, whether intensive, sedentary husbandry or nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralism, were the other major food-producing activities of the ancient countryside. Kron 2008 offers a synthetic overview of ancient animal husbandry and pointers to further reading in the bibliography. Several studies on ancient pastoralism appeared in the late 1980s and 1990s, focusing fundamentally on two key issues: the extent of ancient transhumance and the degree of integration between pastoralism and agriculture. The essays in Whittaker 1988, with their wide chronological and geographical coverage, were important in setting the trend in the investigation of this topic and discussing method and theory, in particular the inherent difficulties posed by wanting to reconstruct ancient pastoralism on the basis of archaeological evidence. For Roman Republican Italy a key issue that goes hand in hand with that of animal husbandry is the question of the occupation of public land (the ager publicus populi Romani) on the part of wealthy landlords. Rosenlaar 2010 is the latest, comprehensive treatment on the ager publicus. Hitchner 1994, by focusing on a part of North Africa where the relationship of pastoralism with urban centers and their agrarian countryside was an important element in the history of the region, stresses the importance of investigating whether the forms of pastoralism attested in the Maghreb in the post-historic period were indeed immutable. The author’s starting point is information on pastoral societies found in the ancient sources and the evidence for pastoral activities in the Roman period identified in the Kasserine survey (see Regional Studies). Segard 2009 returns to the issue of the scant and dispersed evidence available for the reconstruction of ancient pastoralism even for regions strongly associated, historically, with pastoral activities. Considerable development has occurred in zooarchaeological studies addressing the questions of meat consumption, type of diet and its relation to cultural factors, and improvement in animal breeds, therefore having a direct or indirect bearing on the study of ancient husbandry and pastoralism. MacKinnon 2004 was important in this context not only for moving discussion of zooarchaeological data away from the site-by-site model, attempting instead a study covering the whole of Italy, but also for stressing the importance of adopting standard recovery practices in excavation and standard convention in the publication of the data if these are to be useful for wider sociohistorical contextualization. Rearing and consumption of certain mammals versus others have also been at the core of the discussion on the relationship between Roman conquest and dietary habits. King 1999 looks at isolating regional patterns of diet in the western part of the Roman world and explores the concept of Romanization and diachronic change. In the northwestern provinces in particular, the military presence had a notable impact on dynamics of food production and consumption. Groot 2008, which looks at social and economic changes in a rural community of the Civitas Batavorum through the data from excavation of two settlements and a necropolis, offers a picture of the countryside in frontier zones which is quite distinct from the developments in the Mediterranean areas. Besides the obvious differences in geography and climate, shaping factors in this region were the opportunities and market demands raised by the presence of large army forces and possibly by Roman taxation.

Groot, Maaike. 2008. Animals in ritual and economy in a Roman frontier community: Excavations in Tiel-Passewaaij. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed account of the excavations and the faunal data and analysis of the changing role of animals in the socioeconomic and cultural spheres. It investigates the integration of this community into wider trade networks, showing how the specialization in animal husbandry was a response to market demands. For advanced students and specialists.
Find this resource:
Hitchner, Bruce R. 1994. Image and reality: The changing face of pastoralism in the Tunisian high steppe. In Landuse in the Roman Empire. Edited by Jesper Carlsen, Peter Ørsted, and Jens E. Skydsgaard, 27–44. Rome: L’Erma Bretschneider.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that evidence from this region suggests that Roman rule caused an evolution from semi-nomadic pastoralism to more specialized forms of pastoral production, which included long-distance transhumance, nomadism, and large-scale sedentary animal husbandry. It complements the studies on intensive oleiculture in the region; suitable for students.
Find this resource:
King, Anthony C. 1999. Diet in the Roman world: A regional inter-site comparison of the mammal bones. Journal of Roman Archaeology 12:168–202.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the fundamental studies on ancient diet, which uses excavated bone assemblages to infer dietary preferences in the consumption of mammals and links them to specific cultural groups and sociopolitical contexts such as the Roman conquest.
Find this resource:
Kron, Geoffrey. 2008. Animal husbandry, hunting, fishing, and fish production. In The Oxford handbook of engineering and technology in the classical world. Edited by John P. Oleson, 175–222. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
As this is a chapter in a handbook on engineering and technology, the angle of presentation privileges discussion of technical advancements such as breeding practices, animal nutrition, and veterinary care. It is a suitable introductory reading for undergraduate students before delving deeper into the subject.
Find this resource:
MacKinnon, Michael R. 2004. Production and consumption of animals in Roman Italy: Integrating the zooarchaeological and textual evidence. Journal of Roman Archaeology Suppl. 54. Portsmouth, RI: JRA.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book can be considered the first study to take a regional approach to the study of zooarchaeological data (it considers bones from ninety-seven sites) and to systematically integrate the discussion of the taxa with the ancient textual evidence. It is an important testing ground for zooarchaeological evidence and method.
Find this resource:
Rosenlaar, Saskia. 2010. Public land in the Roman Republic: A social and economic history of Ager Publicus in Italy, 396–89 BC. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577231.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses Roman public land, predominantly from the point of view of its legal conditions, and argues against traditional views of late Roman Republican history, such as the occupation of public land by the rich and the resulting decline in the welfare of the free farmers. For advanced students and specialists.
Find this resource:
Segard, Maxence. 2009. Pastoralism, rural economy and landscape evolution in the western Alps. Journal of Roman Archaeology 22.1: 170–182.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Taking as starting point the studies carried out in Provence and published in French (e.g., the article by Leveau and Segard in Pallas 64, 2004), which looked at the ancient sheepfolds identified on the La Crau plain
Find this resource:
Whittaker, C. R. ed. 1988. Pastoral economies in classical Antiquity. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, supp. 14. Cambridge, UK: Philological Society.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It comprises essays in English, French, Italian, and German. Cherry’s chapter on pre- and protohistoric economies in the Aegean and Garnsey’s on mountain economies in southern Europe are valuable for the discussion of methodological and theoretical issues, such as the use of archaeological and ethnographic evidence and geographical determinism.
Find this resource:
Circulation of Goods

The countryside was not simply the place of production for a range of foodstuffs and goods, but played also an important role in the circulation of these goods through periodic markets (nundinae) and fairs. How agricultural surplus and goods needed at rural and urban settlements circulated is discussed in De Ligt 1993, a fundamental study on periodic fairs and markets in the Roman world. Frayn 1993 focuses specifically on Roman Italy, analyzing both urban and rural markets from various perspectives (structures, goods sold, organization and legislation, etc.). Interesting discussion of specific aspects connected to periodic markets can be found in Lo Cascio 2000, which is largely concerned with Roman Italy. Hollander 2007 stresses that in the late Republic in rural zones coinage was not that important because transactions predominantly consisted in the exchange of commodities and labor. The other area of the empire which has seen substantial scholarship on periodic markets, largely because of a number of important inscriptions, is North Africa. Shaw 1981 is still fundamental reading for the periodic markets in this region, although some of his conclusions have been questioned, such as that the markets on estates were tied to the internal economy of the domain, but not to the external sphere of large-scale trade and exchange between domains, or between agricultural estates and the state (see, for instance, Zelener’s essay in Lo Cascio 2000). Chaouali 2002–2003 also discusses North Africa, with specific focus on the epigraphic evidence, dated to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, attesting markets on large estates. Fentress 2009 proposes interesting lines of research in order to answer the question of the relationship between urban and rural markets in North Africa. By focusing on where the periodic markets were actually held, she comes to the conclusion that several extramural sanctuaries to Mercury, with their open spaces and location along communication routes, are the best candidates for the location of periodic markets.

Chaouali, Moheddine. 2002–2003. Les nundinae dans les grands domaines en Afrique du Nord à l’époque romaine. Antiquités africaines 38–39:375–386.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The discussion of a number of north African Latin inscriptions leads to the conclusion that the markets on the rural estates were for the landlords a source of wealth and also a means of controlling trade on the part of the state. It also addresses the topography of these markets.
Find this resource:
De Ligt, Luke. 1993. Fairs and markets in the Roman Empire: Economic and social aspects of periodic trade in a pre-industrial society. Amsterdam: Gieben.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is a comprehensive study of periodic markets and fairs in the Roman imperial world, suitable for advanced students. It rests on a wide range of primary sources, but its major strength is in the analysis of literary and epigraphic material.
Find this resource:
Fentress, Elizabeth. 2009. Where were North African nundinae held? In Communities and connections: Essays in honour of Barry Cunliffe. Edited by Chris Gosden, Helena Hamerow, Philip De Jersey, and Gary Lock, 125–141. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It discusses the possibility that extramural sanctuaries were the sites of periodic markets. The hypothesis, which needs testing by excavation, might reveal that products destined for the trans-Mediterranean markets were not present in local markets, where instead one would find pottery and other small artisanal productions.
Find this resource:
Frayn, Joan M. 1993. Markets and fairs in Roman Italy: Their importance from the second century BC to the third century. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The book clearly discusses both urban markets and rural periodic markets and constitutes a good first point of reference for a variety of topics related to markets. The treatment of fairs and livestock markets is particularly interesting. A shortcoming is the rather simplistic use of Central Place Theory.
Find this resource:
Hollander, David B. 2007. Money in the Late Roman Republic. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 29. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book can be placed in the wider debate on the nature of ancient money and the sophistication of Roman financial institutions. In terms of agricultural production and circulation of goods, the section on monetary functions and assets that could fulfill these (e.g., grain, land, slaves) are of interest.
Find this resource:
Lo Cascio, Elio, ed. 2000. Mercati permanenti e mercati periodici nel mondo romano: Atti degli incontri capresi di storia dell’economia antica, Capri, 13–15 ottobre 1997. Bari, Italy: Edipuglia.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The volume includes essays in English, Italian, and French and looks at markets and trade from different perspectives. Of particular interest are the essays by Storchi Marino on the periodic market circuit of Latium and Campania and Hopkins on rents, taxes, and trade.
Find this resource:
Shaw, Brent D. 1981. Rural markets in North Africa and the political economy of the Roman Empire. Antiquités africaines 17:37–83.
DOI: 10.3406/antaf.1981.1072Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Proposes two distinct sets of marketing institutions: the urban, which included also markets on domains, and the rural, which comprised periodic fairs and the village-market complexes serving the clientele on the domains themselves. Movements between the two were determined by the urban social structure and its ability to control the countryside.
Find this resource:
Manufacturing and Extraction Activities

The Roman countryside was also where a series of manufacturing and extraction activities took place, for instance pottery production. This activity ranged from the relatively small-scale production of amphorae and storage vessels to be used to store and commercialize the agricultural produce of a given farm/villa to large-scale production, often including bricks and tiles as well, supplying more than one villa. Producers of a type of tableware that became very popular from the late 1st century BCE, the Arretine ware or terra sigillata made near modern Arezzo, and its imperial continuation (Samian ware) were also located in the countryside. While a vast bibliography exists on the typology of these vessels and their stamps, much less is known of the physical appearance of the workshops. Bergamini 2007, on the excavation of an entire settlement of c. fifty potters at Scoppieto, along the Tiber Valley in Umbria, is an exception. Samian ware production took place in Gaul, in order to bring production closer to the northern markets. The major production centers were La Graufensenque and Lezoux. Bémont, et al. 1987 offers an overview of the production settlement of La Graufensenque. A large number of studies has focused on the pottery forms, the distribution of the wares, the stamps, the relationships between potters within a workshop, and the links between potters and consumers. Marichal 1988 is a fundamental study for the organization of the Roman pottery “industry”: it examines the graffiti found on Samian plates accompanying the load of each firing of a kiln. Quarrying and mining were extraction activities that took place in the countryside. Quarries ranged from small ones, used over a limited time period, to larger quarries of special stone (e.g., colored marble) under control of the imperial administration. Hirt 2010 offers a comprehensive study of the organizational aspects related to quarries and mines controlled by the imperial administration. The bibliography related to individual quarries is vast, but a very useful resource for research in this field is Russell 2013, an online database of quarries in the Roman world. Domergue 1990 is an excellent study of the important mines of the Iberian Peninsula. Roman mining had notable environmental impact. Bordes and Domergue 2007 discusses the technique described by Pliny, Naturalis Historia 33.70–78 as observed at the mining site of Las Medulas, whereas Rosman, et al. 1997 presents the traces of air pollution connected to Roman mining and smelting as revealed by the study of Greenland ice cores.

Bémont, Colette, Alain Vernhet, and Françoise Beck. 1987. La Graufesenque: Village de potiers gallo-romains. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The catalogue of an exhibition of La Graufesenque products which toured various French museums in 1987–1989; includes a summary of the excavations and an overview of the structures discovered, and presents the various ceramic products of this site.
Find this resource:
Bergamini, Margherita, ed. 2007. Scoppieto I: Studi del territorio e dei materiali (Lucerne, opus doliare, metalli). Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
First volume of the results of the excavation carried out at Scoppieto, where a settlement devoted to the production of terra sigillata tableware, lamps, bricks, and tiles and active from the Augustan period to the 2nd century CE was investigated.
Find this resource:
Bordes, Jean-Louis, and Claude Domergue. 2007. À propos de la ruina montium de Pline l’Ancien: Une lecture technique du site de Las Médulas (León, Espagne). In Énergie hydraulique et machines élévatrices d’eau dans l’Antiquité: Actes du Colloque International organisé par l’Établissement public de coopération culturelle Pont du Gard, l’UMR 5140 du CNRS «Archéologie des sociétés méditerranéennes» et le Centre Jean Bérard (UMS 1797 du CNRS/EFR) à Vers-Pont-du-Gard, 20–22 septembre 2006. Edited by Jean-Pierre Brun and Jean-Luc Fiches, 89–111. Collection du Centre Jean Bérard 27. Naples, Italy: Centre Jean Bérard.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In mining, particularly for gold, the Romans used a technique which required notable hydraulic works and which left behind an eroded landscape: undermining a mountain with water collected at higher elevations and released at once. This interesting chapter examines the application of this technique at the gold mines of Las Medulas.
Find this resource:
Domergue, Claude. 1990. Les mines de la Péninsule Ibérique dans l’antiquité romaine. Rome: École française de Rome.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This study covers every aspect of the mines in the Iberian Peninsula: discussion of the ancient sources, the geological and geographical settings, extraction before and during the Roman period, management and administration, social and economic aspects, and technical solutions used in the extraction of ore.
Find this resource:
Hirt, Alfred Michael. 2010. Imperial mines and quarries in the Roman world: Organizational aspects, 27 BC-AD 235. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572878.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It is the most up-to-date general study on this subject. Chapter 2 discusses geology and topography and how the topography of a mining or quarrying district could also determine the spatial arrangement of work procedures and directive processes.
Find this resource:
Marichal, Robert. 1988. Les graffites de La Graufesenque (Supplément à Gallia 47). Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la Recherche scientifique.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Study of the graffiti, in particular those on plates accompanying each kiln load. The graffiti indicate that the production was made by individual workshops sharing common kilns. Production reached staggering amounts: 25,380 is the smallest number of vessels/kiln load, 31,010 the largest, allowing to estimate a production of one million vessels per season.
Find this resource:
Rosman, Kevin J. R., Warrick Chisholm, Sungmin Hong, Jean-Pierre Candelone, and Claude F. Boutron. 1997. Lead from Carthaginian and Roman Spanish mines isotopically identified in Greenland ice dated from 600 B.C. to 300 A.D. Environment, Science and Technology 31:3413–3416.
DOI: 10.1021/es970038kSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The study of levels of heavy metal in ice cores found that between 600 BCE and 300 CE there was large-scale atmospheric pollution. Scientists were able to trace the lead isotopes to the mining districts in southwest and southeast Spain, giving quantitative evidence of their importance in the Carthaginian and Roman periods.
Find this resource:
Russell, Benjamin J. 2013. Gazetteer of Stone Quarries in the Roman World. Version 1.0.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This database of quarries is hosted on the Oxford Roman Economy Project website; it has an interface that allows customized searches and gives bibliographical references for each site. This resource can also be downloaded as a PDF document for consultation when online access is not possible.
Find this resource:
Sanctuaries and Tombs

Another feature present in the Roman countryside was the sanctuary. Sanctuary types, locations, and divinities worshipped obviously varied greatly across the Roman world. In the Republican period in Italy rural sanctuaries played an important role as centers of local identity, political aggregation, and exchange of goods via periodic markets. As example one can refer to the sanctuaries of Hercules, common in central Appennine Italy, which were centers connected to pastoralism and animal husbandry: periodic cattle markets took place at these sanctuaries, and salt, needed in husbandry and cheese making, was commercialized. Letta 1992 investigates the epigraphic corpus to define a classification of rural sanctuaries and their relationship to rural settlements. Stek 2009, with its focus on late Republican rural religion and village life, aims at furthering the understanding of the Roman impact on rural religion of Italy. Coarelli 1987 remains a key study of the large sanctuaries of Lazio—Nemi, Praeneste, Tarracina, etc.—and their links to the political and economic power of the Italic elites in the last two centuries BCE. Leaving Italy aside, for other areas of the Roman world there are works on individual sanctuaries, but not many studies looking at the rural sanctuaries of a region as a whole. Much information is available for the Gauls, due to intense archaeological investigations carried out in the modern equivalent countries; Scheid 2000, not limited to rural sanctuaries, offers an overview on the nature of cultic sites in the Gallo-Roman context. Moving to the other end of the empire, Steinsapir 2005 discusses the relationship between landscape and architecture in the sanctuaries of Roman Syria. Tombs in the Roman world were only in exceptional cases located inside the boundaries of a settlement, so the countryside was also the place of the dead. Normally, necropoleis and tombs were located along the roads leading to a town or city, not far from the settlement. Toynbee 1996 gives an excellent overview of funerary rituals and the physical layout of Roman tombs and necropoleis. Richer families and prominent individuals often decided to be buried in tombs on their villa estates; these were imposing tombs, which often dominated the surrounding landscape. Bodel 1997 explores how villas and their tombs could be a statement of power in the rural landscape and their strong association with the self-representation of the owner and his gens.

Bodel, John. 1997. Monumental villas and villa monuments. Journal of Roman Archaeology 10:5–35.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Roman villas and rural estates traditionally provided a setting for various types of monuments, such as honorific statues, familial portrait busts, and tombs. The association of villas with personal commemoration was particularly strong and it shaped the development of the concept of the villa as a monument in distinctive ways.
Find this resource:
Coarelli, Filippo. 1987. I santuari del Lazio in età repubblicana. Rome: La Nuova Italia scientifica.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Until this book appeared, the large sanctuaries of Lazio had been very little studied. The resulting historical picture emphasizes the Mediterranean dimension of Rome, her allies, and colonies. This study has considerably furthered the understanding of the relationship between Roman and Italic elites in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE.
Find this resource:
Letta, Cesare. 1992. I santuari rurali nell’Italia centro-appenninica: Valori religiosi e funzione aggregativa. Mélanges des l’École Française de Rome 104:109–124.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It gives an overview of the various categories of extra-urban sanctuaries, discusses the divinities normally worshipped at these centers, and stressed how rural sanctuaries continued to play a role as centers of rural aggregation also after pagi and vici were no longer recognized as autonomous juridical entities.
Find this resource:
Quilici, Lorenzo, and Stefania Quilici Gigli, eds. 2003. Santuari e luoghi di culto nell’Italia antica. Atlante Tematico di Topografia Antica 12. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The volume comprises contributions on several sanctuaries of Roman Italy which were particularly important in the Republican period, such as the sanctuary of Hercules at Campochiaro or the sanctuaries of Sora and Norba. The volumes of this series are normally invaluable for archaeological data on otherwise unpublished or little-known sites.
Find this resource:
Scheid, John. 2000. Réflexions sur la notion de lieu de culte dans les Gaules romaines. In Archéologie des sanctuaires en Gaule romaine. Edited by William Van Andringa, 19–26. Saint-Étienne, France: Publications de l’Univ. de Saint-Étienne.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A discussion of what constituted a cult place in the Gallo-Roman world, it gives an overview of temples, sanctuaries, and sacella in varied contexts, from urban, to private, to rural. It is a good starting point to have a general idea about the available evidence and the types of cultic sites found in Gaul.
Find this resource:
Steinsapir, Ann Irvine. 2005. Rural sanctuaries in Roman Syria: The creation of a sacred landscape. BAR International Series 1431. Oxford: John and Erica Hedges.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based on the author’s doctoral thesis, the aim of the study is to determine whether the architecture of rural sanctuaries of the Roman Near East presented conscious inclusion of landscape features. Chapters on sanctuaries not widely known, such as the sanctuary of Zeus at Baetocaece, make this a useful starting point for further reading.
Find this resource:
Stek, Tesse Dieder. 2009. Cult places and cultural change in Republican Italy: A contextual approach to religious aspects of rural society after the Roman conquest. Amsterdam Archaeological Studies 14. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It treats a number of interrelated issues in an attempt to present a coherent model for cultural change in connection to the Roman conquest, although the pre-Roman context of sanctuaries is not explored at length. It gives a comprehensive review of the relationship between the “pagus-vicus system” (see Villages: Vici and Pagi) and rural sanctuaries.
Find this resource:
Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C. 1996. Death and burial in the Roman world. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is an unrevised reprint of the original 1971 edition. Despite its age, this volume is still the best comprehensive discussion, suitable to students, on Roman burial practices, rituals, layout of cemeteries and tombs, etc. It introduces the reader to the full range of sources, including epigraphic literary and archaeological material.
Find this resource:
Infrastructure

The countryside was also the setting for key infrastructure which played an important role for both urban and rural settlements. The road network and structures related to water supply—whether to supply settlements or for irrigation purposes—are the two main categories of infrastructure often seen as symbolic of Roman prowess in engineering. A well-developed road network allowed for easier movement not only of goods but also of people, whereas water management works impacted on agricultural production and on the ability to provide urban amenities. The bibliography on the Roman road network and water management works is quite extensive, and this section focuses on roads and aqueducts in particular, providing only a key selection of works to be used as starting point for further reading.

Roads

A notable feature of the Roman countryside was the road network, which comprised main arteries normally developed for strategic reasons on occasion of military conquest, and a range of secondary roads, often constructed and maintained by landowners. Technical aspects of road construction, engineering solutions adopted, and archaeological examples from Roman Italy are presented in various volumes curated by L. Quilici and S. Quilici Gigli in the series Atlante Tematico di Topografia Antica. Quilici and Quilici Gigli 1992 deals specifically with construction techniques of Roman roads and various case studies, while Quilici and Quilici Gigli 1996 focuses on bridges and viaducts. Quilici 2008 offers an overview of the major roads of Italy and construction techniques in English. The impact the road system had on the ancient countryside, in terms of connecting far-away settlements and towns and their rural hinterland and providing circulation of goods, was in the past downplayed because of the cost land transport had when compared to maritime or fluvial transport. Duncan-Jones 1982, Appendix 17, which argued for high cost of land transport, is still a fundamental reading, but it should be read together with Laurence 1999, in particular chapter 7, which argues for lower costs of land transport in Antiquity. De Soto and Carreras 2009 shows how GIS applications can be used to reconstruct the level of connectivity offered by the road network in Antiquity. ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World offers an interactive, web-based interface which allows a broad reconstruction of the travel time and cost associated with a range of routes in Antiquity. Adams 2007, which focuses on Roman Egypt, is an example of a detailed study of regional transport system outside of Italy.

Adams, Colin. 2007. Land transport in Roman Egypt 30 BC–AD 300: A study in administration and economic history. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199203970.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An excellent study of transport in Egypt which draws on the numerous documentary papyri of the region. It is not limited to the discussion of roads and land routes but covers every aspect connected to land transport. It is suitable for graduate students and specialists.
Find this resource:
De Soto, Pau, and Cesar Carreras. 2009. La movilidad en época romana en hispania: Aplicaciones de análisis de redes (SIG) para el estudio diacrónico de las infraestructuras de transporte. HABIS–Universidad de Sevilla 40:303–324.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of land routes and connectivity of the Iberian Peninsula in the Roman period which uses GIS to determine the road hierarchy. The method used could be applied to other areas of the empire. The journal is now an open access source available electronically via the Dialnet interface.
Find this resource:
Duncan-Jones, Richard. 1982. The economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative studies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is the second edition of the 1974 publication; this study is still a fundamental work of ancient economic history, covering a number of important topics. Appendix 17 deals directly with the cost of transport in Antiquity and argues for its high cost in comparison to sea and fluvial transport.
Find this resource:
Laurence, Ray. 1999. Roads of Roman Italy: Mobility and cultural change. London: Routledge.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is a concise and accessible work, structured into fourteen brief chapters. Drawing on archaeological, historical, and theoretical sources, it investigates the changes that occurred in space and time with the development of the road and water network of Italy. It is a suitable book for undergraduate students.
Find this resource:
ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, navigable rivers, and sea routes, this interactive model reconstructs travel duration and cost. The sections “Understanding ORBIS,” “Building ORBIS,” and “Using ORBIS” should be read carefully before using this tool in order to fully understand its potentials and limitations.
Find this resource:
Quilici, Lorenzo. 2008. Land transport, part 1: Roads and bridges. In The Oxford handbook of engineering and technology in the classical world. Edited by John Peter Oleson, 551–579. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Building on the author’s great expertise in this field, this chapter synthetically discusses examples of roads and bridges of Roman Italy and gives a clear overview of building techniques and technical solutions adopted by Roman engineers. It is suitable to students and the bibliography directs the reader to further reading.
Find this resource:
Quilici, Lorenzo, and Stefania Quilici Gigli, eds. 1992. Tecnica stradale romana. Atlante Tematico di Topografia Antica 1. Rome: L’Erma Bretschneider.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focusing primarily on building techniques, the various contributions treat case studies from across the Italian peninsula. Often discussion of roads of Roman Italy is limited to central Italy, but the chapters include examples ranging from northern Italy to Apulia.
Find this resource:
Quilici, Lorenzo, and Stefania Quilici Gigli, eds. 1996. Strade romane: Ponti e viadotti. Atlante Tematico di Topografia Antica 5. Rome: L’Erma Bretschneider.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The contributions in this volume are important in order to understand the complexity of the landscape of Roman Italy, but a shortcoming is the lack of good maps that contextualize local finds in the larger geographical picture, especially when discussing the discovery of portions of Roman roads.
Find this resource:
Aqueducts and Water Supply

Infrastructure related to the water supply of towns, villages, and villas was another feature of the ancient countryside. Aqueducts, capturing the water from available sources often far away from the intended destination, are another engineering feat normally associated with the Romans. Most aqueduct channels ran partly in underground channels and partly over ground, over the typical succession of arches still visible in many places when approaching an ancient city. Hodge 1992 is the standard reference work for water supply and Roman aqueducts. Aqueducts were not a Roman invention, but the spread of the bathing habit in the Roman world and the use of concrete and the arch form in building allowed for the great diffusion of aqueducts. Coulton 1987 discusses these issues in connection to Asia Minor, where some impressive Roman aqueducts are preserved. Wilson 1999, contrary to several studies emphasizing the ideological view that aqueducts were built solely to benefit cities, investigates the role urban aqueducts played in rural life. An excellent starting point for information on individual aqueducts is the webpage Roman Aqueducts; the authors of this page are also working on a sister website, whose link they give on the Home page of Roman Aqueducts, with the aim to collect the available corpus of literature on the subject in a systematic way. Aqueducts running in the countryside were related not simply to urban water supply or irrigation of cultivations in the countryside but also to the use of waterpower in food processing, such as in the case of water mills. Leveau 1996 examines the impressive complex of Barbegal near Arles, where a Roman aqueduct supplied several water mills built along the side of a hill. Wilson 2008 and Grewe 2008 offer an introduction to various infrastructure and engineering solutions related to water supply, which in many cases were present in the ancient countryside. Other water management works often attested in the Roman countryside are dams and irrigation channels; Beltrán Lloris 2006 discusses an important Latin inscription discovered in 1993 in the area of Zaragoza which sheds light on the organization of agricultural irrigation and rural districts (pagi; see Villages: Vici and Pagi) belonging to two different cities (the colonia Caesaraugusta and the municipium Cascantum).

Beltrán Lloris, Francisco. 2006. An irrigation decree from Roman Spain: The Lex Rivi Hiberiensis. Journal of Roman Studies 96:147–197.
DOI: 10.3815/000000006784016242Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article constitutes a preliminary discussion of the inscription; a fuller edition has not appeared yet. The article offers the Latin text, an English translation, and a commentary on the main points of interest, thus making this important primary source accessible to both students and scholars.
Find this resource:
Coulton, J. J. 1987. Roman aqueducts in Asia Minor. In Roman architecture in the Greek world. Edited by Sarah Macready and Frederick Hugh Thompson, 72–84. London: Society of Antiquaries.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the many aqueducts of Roman Asia Minor and how their spread was made possible not simply by Roman engineering skills but by the Roman peace, its associated urban expansion, and, most importantly, the spread of the Roman bathing habit.
Find this resource:
Grewe, Klaus. 2008. Tunnels and canals. In The Oxford handbook of engineering and technology in the classical world. Edited by John Peter Oleson, 319–336. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This chapter is valuable as an introduction to important themes related to the topic treated and for the bibliographical apparatus. The title is descriptive of the content, which covers both the Greek and the Roman period in terms of chronology. Tunneling projects were often connected to the building of aqueducts.
Find this resource:
Hodge, A. Trevor. 1992. Roman aqueducts and water supply. London: Duckworth.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is the standard and best work on Roman aqueducts. It treats the subject in detail, with great attention given to the technical aspects and engineering solutions adopted in order to be able to transport water for kilometers from a remote source to its final destination.
Find this resource:
Leveau, P. 1996. The Barbegal water mill in its environment: Archaeology and the economic and social history of Antiquity. Journal of Roman Archaeology 9:137–153.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Located near Arles, the Berbegal complex is impressive for its scale: a total of sixteen water wheels operated by a channel fed by the aqueduct bringing water to Roman Arles. This article discusses the archaeological evidence from the site and the implications such a complex has for the economic history of Antiquity.
Find this resource:
Roman Aqueducts.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although this site is not the most user-friendly to navigate, its content is a great resource on Roman aqueducts across the whole Roman Empire. Particularly valuable are the bibliographical references (the link given above) and the many photos of aqueducts, even the lesser-known ones. It is being constantly updated with new content.
Find this resource:
Wilson, Andrew I. 1999. Deliveries extra urbem: Aqueducts and the countryside. Journal of Roman Archaeology 12:314–332.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It discusses how urban aqueducts were important in rural life as well. It examines examples of aqueducts with rural branches from the countryside of Rome, southern Gaul, Carthage, and Caesarea Maritima. An appendix by Leveau discusses the aqueduct of Caesarea/Cherchel in North Africa and the complex of Barbegal in Gaul.
Find this resource:
Wilson, Andrew I. 2008. Hydraulic engineering and water supply. In The Oxford handbook of engineering and technology in the classical world. Edited by John Peter Oleson, 337–368. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It offers an overview of issues connected to water supply and related engineering knowledge. Not everything discussed in this chapter relates to the countryside alone, but it is a valuable reading which gives the reader a quick and complete overview. The bibliography is also very useful for further reading on specific themes.
Find this resource:
Modifying the Environment

Besides the construction of infrastructure (roads, aqueducts, bridges), human intervention on the landscape could at times be more drastic, altering the natural landscape considerably, as in the case of mining and the many large-scale reclamation works undertaken in some areas in the Roman period. Quilici and Quilici Gigli 1995 collects several contributions on reclamation projects or other types of modification of the landscape (dams, irrigation channels, etc.) from Roman Italy in connection to the amelioration of agriculture. These large-scale projects required notable resources (financial and manpower) and therefore involved the army, the government, or wealthy landlords. Rippon 2000 well exemplifies, in the case of Roman Britain, how villa proprietors reclaimed coastal wetlands in order to increase agricultural production. The coastal environment of the ancient Mediterranean in many regions was very different from modern times, after the large land reclamation projects undertaken in the early 20th century. There were many coastal lagoons and marshy areas, which nonetheless offered important natural resources (fishing, salt production, fowling, etc.). Traina 1988 treats the topic of marshes and reclamation works extensively, while Fantasia 1999, although focusing on the Greek world, is of interest for understanding the importance these “marginal” areas could have in providing resources for human settlements. Horden and Purcell 2000, with its long durée perspective, has much of interest on the topic of modification of the landscape. More recently, scholarly attention has moved to consider deforestation in the Roman period and the much-current issue of climate change. Harris 2013 presents several contributions of great interest for these topics; they range from chapters on energy consumption and climate change in the Roman world, to how to detect Mediterranean deforestation.

Fantasia, Ugo. 1999. Aree marginali nella Grecia antica: Paludi e bonifiche. In Demografia, sistemi agrari, regimi alimentari nel mondo antico: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi (Parma 17–19 ottobre 1997). Edited by Domenico Vera, 65–116. Bari, Italy: Edipuglia.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This chapter discusses marsh areas and reclamation works in ancient Greece and the role such environments might have in providing particular resources to local communities. The discussion is of relevance also for other areas of the Mediterranean in Antiquity.
Find this resource:
Harris, William Vernon, ed. 2013. The ancient Mediterranean environment between science and history. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 39. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The volume presents the proceedings of a conference held in Rome in 2012. Most of the papers focused on climate and climate change, energy, and the environmental questions of deforestation and land use, reflecting in part the current focus of historical research.
Find this resource:
Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. 2000. The corrupting sea: A study of Mediterranean history. Oxford: Blackwell.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is a landmark study on the “ecological” history of the Mediterranean basin from Antiquity to more recent times. Since the focus is on the human-environment interaction, it has much interesting content in connection with modification of the landscape.
Find this resource:
Quilici, Lorenzo, and Stefania Quilici Gigli, eds. 1995. Interventi di bonifica agraria nell’Italia romana. Atlante Tematico di Topografia Antica 4. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The various articles in this volume, all in Italian, cover the entire Italian peninsula. The discussion of reclamation works and other ancient projects is based on the archaeological evidence and the study of the landscape. The last two chapters, one discussing lower Provence, the other Crimea, offer interesting comparisons from the provincial world.
Find this resource:
Rippon, Stephen. 2000. The Romano-British exploitation of coastal wetlands: Survey and excavation on the North Somerset Levels 1993–7. Britannia 31:69–200.
DOI: 10.2307/526920Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It argues that reclamation of the coastal wetlands at North Somerset Levels occurred in the mid-3rd century CE on the initiative of villa owners. The article discusses also how the decision to exploit or modify an area through reclamation reflects wider socioeconomic trends within a region, including the perceived relative value of natural resources.
Find this resource:
Traina, Giusto. 1988. Paludi e bonifiche del mondo antico: Saggio di archeologia geografica. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author has written several works examining marshes and reclamation works of Antiquity, in particular in the context of northern Italy and the Po Delta. The volume is still the only monograph treating the topic of land reclamation in the Roman period and investigating the role these lands had in agriculture, particularly viticulture.
Find this resource:
Conquest, Romanization, and Resistance

The Roman countryside has been discussed also in terms of imperialism (Romanization and exploitation of a region’s resources through taxation, etc.), as place for “resistance” to Roman rule on the part of indigenous populations, or place for the mixing of cultures. Several early studies on Romanization and the impact this phenomenon had on the landscape of conquered regions dealt with North Africa because of the colonial interests of modern European countries. Therefore, Bénabou 1975, an early study that instead introduced the concept of resistance, focused precisely on North Africa. A region of the empire on which a large bibliography, mostly in Spanish, exists dealing with the concept of Romanization is the Iberian Peninsula; Curchin 1986 discusses some of the methodological problems inherent in inferring evidence of “Romanization” from archaeological evidence. Alcock 1993 combines the investigation of changes to the rural landscape of Achaia as inferred from field survey data with discussion of the urban landscape in the context of Rome’s conquest. The approach used in this work has become a model for the study of other regions. To approaches focusing on conquest and intentional imposition of practices from the top down or on resistance, Webster 2001 instead proposed to use the more useful concept of “creolization,” arguing that creole perspective offers insights into the negotiation of post-conquest identities from the “bottom up.” In the same year Keay and Terrenato 2001 was published, a volume which addressed the regional variations (a problem for the study of Romanization), which has led to a lack of communication between scholars working on Italy and those working on the provinces. Postcolonial studies have had much influence on this topic, particularly in Anglophone publications. Mattingly 2011 draws on the framework provided by postcolonial studies to offer a nuanced discussion of Roman imperialism. Mattingly 2006 investigates the conquest of Britain not from the perspective of the conquerors or the local elites, but instead from the perspective of the native population at large; it attempts to determine what effects Roman rule had making a valuable contribution to the history and archaeology of the province. The combination of specific types of archaeological investigation techniques, and the question of how Roman conquest impacted upon the landscape and affected settlement patterns and social structure, combined with the tendency to regional studies, are to be found in Oltean 2007, which investigates Roman Dacia.

Alcock, Susan E. 1993. Graecia capta: The landscapes of Roman Greece. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focusing on the province of Achaia, it discusses landscape in its wider sense in the context of the Roman conquest. The use of field survey data for the study of rural landscape, and the investigation of how the conquest transformed it, offers a transferable methodological framework, making this a landmark study for students and scholars alike.
Find this resource:
Bénabou, M. 1975. La résistance africaine à la romanisation. Paris: F. Maspero.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This book is an early example of the reaction to “traditional” histories, which connected modern colonialism in North Africa either to Roman imperialism or to nationalistic history. It is of interest for the history of historiography and the connection between modern events and the interpretation of ancient history.
Find this resource:
Curchin, Leonard A. 1986. The Romanization of Spain: An overview. Echos du monde classique. Classical views 30:271–285.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article is still useful, particularly for students, because it reflects on methodological problems (for instance the problem in inferring Romanization only from one class of evidence). It gives a complete overview of the topic from different angles (e.g., linguistic use, urbanization).
Find this resource:
Keay, Simon, and Nicola Terrenato, eds. 2001. Italy and the West: Comparative issues in Romanization. Oxford: Oxbow.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Nineteen chapters examine the various responses “Romanization” elicited among the different ethnic groups, social classes, etc., with the aim to further the understanding of Romanization during Rome’s expansion in Italy. This volume has drawn attention to the fact that also in its early stages the process was a bidirectional negotiation between Italian communities and Rome.
Find this resource:
Mattingly, David J. 2006. An imperial possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC–AD 409. Vol. 1 of The Penguin History of Britain. London: Allen Lane.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The book is aimed at the general reader and also exists in paperback edition, but it is of interest also to students and scholars alike. The perspective the author takes is new and opens the way to further debate. Section 4 of the book, devoted to rural communities, is most relevant for the ancient countryside.
Find this resource:
Mattingly, David J. 2011. Imperialism, power, and identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Several sections of this book (some are reworkings of earlier publications) deal with aspects of the Roman countryside in respect to conquest and imperialism, particularly section 3 on “Resources.” It offers a good overview of several current themes in the debate about imperialism and conquest.
Find this resource:
Oltean, Ioana A. 2007. Dacia: Landscape, colonisation, romanisation. Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies. London: Routledge.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This work rests on the first aerial reconnaissance program launched exclusively for archaeological purposes in 1998–2004. It discusses previous theories of native settlement patterns and the impact of Roman colonization. The Roman-native interaction is analyzed from a landscape perspective, focusing on the core territory of both the Iron Age and Roman Dacia.
Find this resource:
Webster, Jane. 2001. Creolizing the Roman provinces. American Journal of Archaeology 105.2: 209–225.
DOI: 10.2307/507271Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The article argues that while “Romanization” as a concept has merits as a means of envisaging the processes by which provincial elites adopted the symbols of Rome, it is fundamentally flawed when applied to the majority of populations of the provinces. The Roman provinces may be more usefully regarded as “creolized” than as Romanized.
Find this resource:
The End of the Roman Countryside

Late Antiquity was a period marked by dramatic sociopolitical changes. Just as the cities experienced many transformations, with the collapse, at least in the West, of urban social structures and service, so too did the countryside change. A common phenomenon in many regions was the development of settlements (villages) around the villas of the elite. On the transition from Roman to medieval countryside, with particular reference to Italy, a quick introduction to relevant issues can be found in Francovich and Hodges 2003, a very accessible short book. Chavarría Arnau, et al. 2006 gathers papers on late antique villas and the rural landscape of Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. One the social changes affecting the countryside and the emergence of the late antique colonatus, Lo Cascio 1997 is still valuable, for it offers an overview which covers several key themes. Recently, however, Harper 2011 has challenged the idea that late antique slavery was a transition phenomenon leading to medieval serfdom. Christie 2004 treats several key aspects of the changes of Late Antiquity, with contributions focusing on different geographic areas. In reaction to the idea that Late Antiquity was a period of crisis and contraction, Banaji 2002 on the contrary argues that the late empire (5th–7th century) saw substantial economic and social change. One of the important changes that occurred in Late Antiquity is the spread of Christianity; Bowes 2008 investigates Christianity in the context of the late antique countryside, reaching fresh conclusions about the impact the social hierarchy of rural estates had on the early Christian villa communities. Wickham 2005 is the most authoritative and ambitious study aiming at offering a comparative history of the regions of the late Roman and post-Roman world in the period 400–800.

Banaji, Jairus. 2002. Agrarian change in Late Antiquity: Gold, labour, and aristocratic dominance. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The book argues that Late Antiquity was not a period of total crisis, but that the stable gold coinage gave the stimulus to substantial economic and social change. The author has expertise in agrarian history, Marxist theories, capitalism, and the modern corporate world, and these theoretical frameworks shape this study.
Find this resource:
Bowes, Kim. 2008. “Christianizing” the countryside: Rural estates and private cult. In Private worship, public values, and religious change in Late Antiquity. By Kim Bowes, 125–188. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It investigates how villa-based Christian communities were shaped by the complex social relationships that governed the estate itself and argues that that estate Christianity was not simply an embryonic parish system. This is an important conclusion, considering that at many sites villages and parishes followed on the site of villas.
Find this resource:
Chavarría Arnau, Alexandra, Javier Arce, and Gian Pietro Brogiolo, eds. 2006. Villas tardoantiguas en el Mediterráneo occidental. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The volume contains contributions in Spanish, Italian, and English on various aspects of late antique rural villas. Most chapters focus on individual examples of villas or on specific architectural features, but the coverage gives a good idea of what a late antique villa was and the relationship with the surrounding countryside.
Find this resource:
Christie, Neil, ed. 2004. Landscapes of Change: Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A series of regional studies by leading archaeologists examine the range of transformations that the rural landscape underwent with the disintegration of the political hegemony of the Roman Empire. The emphasis is on problems of analysis and interpretation and on the elements that contributed to the processes of change.
Find this resource:
Francovich, Riccardo, and Richard Hodges. 2003. Villa to village. London: Duckworth.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This slim book is extremely accessible to non-specialists. It challenges the historical view that Italian hilltop villages were first founded in the 10th century, showing that the origins of the medieval village lie in the demise of the Roman villa.
Find this resource:
Harper, Kyle. 2011. Slavery in the late Roman world, AD 275–425. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511973451Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
It examines a subject hitherto neglected: late antique slavery. It concludes that agricultural slavery was very common and, contrary to commonly held views, argues that a deep divide runs through “Late Antiquity,” separating the Roman slave system from its early medieval successors. It is the most comprehensive analysis of a premodern slave system currently available.
Find this resource:
Lo Cascio, Elio, ed. 1997. Terre, proprietari e contadini dell’impero romano: Dall’affitto agrario al colonato tardoantico. Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This volume stems from an international conference held in 1995 and gathers chapters from a range of experts in the field. The focus of the conference was land management structure and labor, and the chapters offer an overview of the topic from different angles and in relation to different geographic areas of the empire.
Find this resource:
Wickham, Chris. 2005. Framing the early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199264490.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The book aims at creating a comparative history of the period leading from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. It is an ambitious work which concentrates on classic socioeconomic themes to offer a complex and sophisticated comparative analysis on which the wider synthesis rests. It is suitable for advanced graduated students and specialists
Find this resource:
back to top