British School at Rome

Saturday 1 st March 2003

INTRODUCTION

The research summaries provided by the participants prior to the workshop are available on-line. These are in Adobe Acrobat PDF Format and require Acrobat Reader for viewing.

SESSION I.

RURAL SETTLEMENT

Summary:
The aim of the Farfa project is, through the use of field survey evidence (and, where appropriate/available, that from excavation and documents), to write a history of society and settlement in the region between the Tiber and the monastery of Farfa, from prehistory to the present.

Click to download the research summary: (322KB)

Summary:
During the early phase of the Tiber Valley Project, restudy of the South Etruria Survey material and archive and wider bibliographical research raised a number of specific questions about rural settlement in the middle Tiber valley. The answers to these were best addressed through targeted field survey. A small area between the River Corese and the Tiber, in the vicinity of the important site of Cures Sabini was selected for a three week season of fieldwork in October 2000.

Click to download the research summary: (549KB)

Note: This paper is written in Italian.

This is a joint field survey project being conducted by the University of Verona (Alessandro Guidi), The British School at Rome (Helen Patterson) and CNR – Istituto di studi sulle civilta' italiche e del mediterraneo antico (Paola Santoro). The area under investigation, the Sabina Tiberina, can geographically be defined as lying between the Tiber, the lower Sabine hills, and the rivers Farfa and Galantina.

Click to download the research summary: (20KB)

Summary:
The main aim of the Nepi Survey was to collect a coherent body of data to study the changes in the local settlement patterns from the Bronze Age onwards. Teams were in the field during three seasons in 1999 and 2000. The Nepi survey revealed the extensive presence of low density prehistoric finds in the territory. There were only a few signs of Archaic settlements in the territory, but Roman finds overshadowed all other periods.

Click to download the research summary: (269KB)

SESSION II.

TOWNS AND HINTERLAND

Summary:
This project aims to study the full range of Roman urban settlements in the lower and middle Tiber valley by means of systematic surface-survey. The strategy has been to use topographical survey, geophysics and systematic surface survey on a site-by-site basis, undertaking the survey of one major and one minor site each year.

Click to download the research summary: (41KB)

With contributions by: Dean Goodman, Salvatore Piro and Yasushi Nishimura

Summary:
This project aims to provide a detailed study of the Roman town and early medieval bishopric. It focuses on a specific form of urbanism – fora – which has been much neglected in studies of Roman urban history, while the continuity of occupation at Forum Novum from Roman town to early medieval bishopric offers the opportunity to examine this period of transition.

Click to download the research summary: (215KB)

Summary:
The main aim of this project is to produce a new evaluation of the urban development of the Roman city of Ostia, concentrating on four key themes: the formation of urban identity; the nature and mechanics of urban change; the social structure of urban space; and economics of urban life.

Click to download the research summary: (36KB)

Summary:
This research examines agriculture and subsistence in the Middle Tiber Valley, with the aim of modelling subsistence regimes associated with the development of settlements within the study area, using historical and archaeological evidence in conjunction with a spatial predictive modelling system.

Click to download the research summary: (43KB)

Summary:
This project has focused on the extensive evidence within the Tiber Valley of road building with a view to understanding the maintenance and improvement to the transport infrastructure by the state, communities and private individuals (corresponding to viae publicae, viae vicinales, and viae privatae). The project sets out to provide a dynamic understanding of the processes that produced the patterning of roads and paving materials found via field survey and incorporated into the Tiber Valley Project GIS database by Helga Di Giuseppe and Rob Witcher.

Click to download the research summary: (289KB)

SESSION III.

PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION

Summery:
The study of the pottery carried out as part of the Tiber Valley Project is providing important new insights into the settlement history of the area and the production and circulation of goods. A fundamental element of this research has been the full and systematic restudy of the material from the South Etruria Survey. Fourteen ceramic specialists have now completed their study of the material comprising over 90,000 diagnostic fragments from over two and a half thousand sites. Over 2500 ceramic types are represented, of which circa 1500 refer to published sequences, and over 1000 of which are unpublished. This paper focuses on a major aspect of the ceramic study: its significance for our understanding of the production and distribution of goods throughout the middle river valley and in relation to Rome from the protohistoric period to the early Middle Ages. These themes are discussed chronologically in six broad periods – protohistory, Etruscan, republican, imperial and late antique and early medieval – and represent the preliminary results of the work of the specialists involved in the project.

Click to download the research summary: (147KB)

Summary:
The central theme for studies of the ancient central Italian brick industry is to locate the figlinae in the Tiber Valley, the idea being that if the absolute position of figlinae is known, then we will be able to work out the economics of this particular industry. While true, it is possible to be entirely relative, and consider the interrelationships preserved in brick (e.g. through co-occurrence in stamps of named individuals or through the use of similar clays) without necessarily knowing exactly where named figlinae were, to answer the same question. Because these relationships change through time and are context-specific they are both dynamic and rich; brick therefore can be used as an indicator of the changing social and physical networks, which tied the hinterland to Rome, and indeed changes in wider Roman society.

Click to download the research summary: (170KB)

Summary:
The aim of this study is to establish a data-set recording the use of veneer in Rome’s hinterland from a variety of contexts dating to the late Republican and Imperial periods. With the emphasis on private construction and commercial spaces, this data provides a framework to model usage, and contrast documented use in properties of aristocratic elite and public construction in Rome.

Click to download the research summary: (444KB)

Summary:
Examination of the ways in which the drainage basin of the River Tiber has been managed in antiquity is clearly a key issue in any attempt to relate ancient settlement patterns to their geographical and landscape settings. But besides the obvious significance of the study of water management in the history of the Tiber Valley as a whole, it can also be used as a lens to examine two larger themes: Rome’s political relationship with other settlements in the Tiber Valley with regard to control over water resources, especially through attempts to control the flooding of the Tiber; economic factors affecting settlement patterns in the Tiber Valley, by analysis of drainage, irrigation and land improvement schemes.

Click to download the research summary: (44KB)

SESSION IV. 

GIS AND THE TIBER VALLEY

Summary:
Using ESRI ARCIMS software a research group is beginning to implement high-end geographic information systems and mapping services via the Internet for the project. Internet mapping software enables users as well as data managers to integrate local data sources with Internet data sources for display, query, and basic analysis in an easy-to-use Web browser. With base data made available in a relatively easy manner and direct to any machine with a web browser, project staff can carry out primary interrogation of project data directly and basic GIS procedures, freeing data managers to carry out system maintenance or enhancement and freeing expert staff from the requirement of extensive GIS training to access essential data.

Click to download the research summary: (25KB)