Research project
Exploring hidden villages in colonial and non-colonial landscapes
A project to explore the configuration of different types of settlement and its role in the evolution of landscape, both in pre-Roman times and in the so-called Colonial landscape. We used several techniques of field survey, pottery classification and other non-invasive approaches to the archaeological record.
- Duration
- 2013 - 2016
- Funding
-
NWO
- Partners
Research question
We need to gain better knowledge at an intra-site level, to do so we need to study the material culture itself and also its special value. And if possible also add other proxy data as geophysics, aerial photo, etc.
Project description
An important phase and perhaps starting point is to develop a classification of archaeological sites in order to gain better knowledge of the diachronic evolution of the Aesernia colonial landscape (Isernia, Molise, Italy).
Classification (Of sites, of pottery typologies, etc.) is a long –established debate in Roman archaeology. Site classification faces the debate where empirical data confronts historical reference settlement categories without a clear agreement between both.
An informed method of multivariate statistical classification, data visualization and critical comparison will be the base for such enquiry.
The project aims to plan and conduct new intra-site surveys using the advantages of point-sampling methodology on Iron Age hill forts to address the project question of pre-roman settlement system around the Roman Colony of Aersenia, and to assess the site formation process, possibly functionality, occupation and material interaction with the Republican Colonial scenario.
Land-use evaluation through aerial photography is essential to contextualize the results of intra-site survey in an environment that has suffered radical transformation since the Second World War.
