Reconstruction of the ancient cultural landscape of the Sarno River basin - the Roman villae rusticae

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Michael Märker; Dr. Florian Seiler
• Subject Area: Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology
• Term: from 2009 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 145430028

The eruption of Somma-Vesuvius A.D. 79 resulted in a nearly complete burial of the entire Sarno River basin to a certain extent conserving the ancient paleo-environmental conditions of this cultural landscape. This interdisciplinary research project aims to reconstruct the ancient cultural landscape of the Sarno River basin by investigating the natural conditions and the anthropogenic influence on the landscape in the Roman period. Representative of ancient rural life and economy and thus of the interactive human-environment relationsship in the Sarno River basin are the roman farms (villae rusticae) because they presumably were distributed within the entire plain and were of vital importance for the utilisation of natural resources. We hypothesise that the spatial distribution of the villae rusticae depends on both socio-economical conditions before A.D. 79 (e.g. centuriation, land tenure, interconnection to cities, infrastructure, lines of communication, political system) and paleo-environmental conditions before A.D. 79 (e.g. paleo-geomorphology, paleo-pedology, access to other natural resources such as water). To determine the former a comprehensive and systematic study of the archaeological data on villae rusticae and agricultural production will be carried out. The latter will be studied by generating a digital elevation model of the A.D. 79 paleo-surface using stratigraphical drilling data and topographic indices. Moreover, after evaluating the pedological change that occurred within the Roman paleosol since its burial A.D. 79 by soil solution studies we will characterise the Roman paleosol in the vicinity of the villae rusticae with respect to its agricultural potential. Consequently, by combining the archaeological findings about villae rusticae and agriculture with paleo-geomorphological and paleo-pedological investigations we intent to gain detailed insights into rural life and agriculture in the Sarno River basin before A.D. 79. Based on an optimal dataset and preliminary work within the scope of the fundamental research of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) this project will be subdivided into two parts: a yearlong pilot project and a subsequent long-term project. The former will be used to demonstrate the feasibility of this geoarchaeological project by testing the methodologies on a smaller data set or/and a smaller spatial scale. In the latter the methodologies will be applied for the entire dataset and regionalized for the entire Sarno River basin. Furthermore the socio-economic and paleo-environmental condition A.D. 79 will be integrated to reconstruct the ancient cultural landscape of the Sarno River basin. For a better understanding of the entire research project the proposal for the yearlong pilot project also contains short descriptions of the work packages of the subsequent long-term project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants