Abandoned Roman towns in Italy (2005-present)
Urban survey of abandoned Roman towns in Italy
The current project of the UGent team aims at contributing to the study of urbanism in Roman Italy by these innovating approaches to the archaeological record, while at the same time taking part in the innovation of methods. After successful applications of such Roman town research in other parts of the western Mediterranean (Lusitania, Corsica) most research is now concentrated on fully or partly abandoned Roman town contexts in Italy. In central Adriatic Italy four towns located in the Potenza valley are being investigated with whole suites of these prospection techniques. They are the coastal colony of Potentia and the inland municipia of Ricina, Trea and Septempeda. Since 2015 full coverage georadar survey work has also started on two towns in Latium (Interamna Lirenas and Falerii Novi) in collaboration with the University of Cambridge (Department of Classics). The contribution of all these integrated surveys, sometimes accompanied by focused small excavation work, allow the detailed and extensive high resolution mapping of the Roman towns and help to enlarge the dataset of ancient towns in Italy with a view on answering crucial historical questions related to town formation and disintegration, the regional character of urbanism, Roman population numbers, town-countryside connections, etc.