Final Report Summary - WORLDVIL (A world of villages: dispersed settlement and colonial expansion in Central-Southern Italy under the Roman Republic (c. 4th-2nd centuries BC)) A world of villages: dispersed settlement and colonial expansion in Central-Southern Italy under the Roman Republic (c. 4th-2nd centuries BC)Final ReportTesse D. StekAimsThis Marie Curie project based at Glasgow University studied the role of clustered non-urban settlements in the formative phase of the Roman Republic. Both ancient and modern viewers have portrayed Roman colonies as key-factors in the spread of the urban model and, typically, are sharply contrasted with the non-urban settlement organization that prevailed in the conquered native Italic areas. The actual evidence for this view is, however, limited for the mid-Republican period, the key phase of Roman expansion. The postdoc project therefore aimed to compare colonial settlement organization with contemporary non-colonial control areas in Central and Southern Italy, with a special focus on non-urban settlements. As recent epigraphic and archaeological work (Stek 2008; 2009; Pelgrom 2008) suggests, village-type or other nucleated rural settlements may have played an important role in early Roman expansion strategies.Using intensive archaeological field survey and geophysical analysis, the aim was to test a new conception of early Roman colonization that is not based on the urban model, but on a distinct polynuclear settlement organization and institutional configuration. Such a conception could shed a different light on the traditional notion of Roman colonies as key-factors in the urbanization and "romanization" of the conquered territories. Notably, it would presuppose different mechanisms of cultural change by fragmenting the traditional monolithic city-state model and de-centering urban centers as the only loci of societal and cultural development. MethodThe project empirically aimed to compare the archaeological data of two colonial territories, and to compare them systematically with patterns of settlement in two equivalent landscapes that were not colonized. This has been done in part on the basis of existing data, both published work by other researchers and field data that was gathered by the postdoc in his previous projects. Particularly interesting nucleated rural sites have been further investigated during several extended and extremely productive field seasons in Molise, Italy. The practical research in the field, working together with an international team of colleagues and students from both Glasgow University and elsewhere, has focused on the territory of the ancient colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC) and of the non-colonial control area in the Tappino valley, in antiquity inhabited by the Italic tribe of the Samnites. The field surveys executed in these areas have led to the discovery of a high number of previously unknown sites (>100), which has already yielded invaluable insights into the pattern of settlement in these areas. More detailed research has focused on important rural sites, by way of more intensive field survey methods, and by way of geophysical research, aided by Tessa Poller and Gert Petersen of Glasgow University. The new projects are presented on the website (still under construction) http://landscapesofearlyromancolonization.com.OutlookThanks to the promising first results of this research, as well as the opportunity to take up a permanent position at the University of Leiden during the course of the Marie Curie project, I have been able to expand the project with two further grants by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) in the meantime. This has enabled me to set up a research group that now systematically targets the very same research question on a much larger scale, deepening and widening the comparison between colonial and non-colonial landscapes in the modern regions of Molise and Basilicata. These new research projects closely involve Italian colleagues and institutions, notably the University of Foggia, the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, as well as with UK and US colleagues and institutions. The basis for this network has been an important outcome of the Marie Curie postdoc project. The interaction with both my supervisor prof. Van Dommelen, now based at Brown University and my international colleagues at Glasgow have greatly enhanced the development and course of the research, and has led to a very fruitful, vivid, and continuous debate. Apart from presentations in Europe and the US and reports and publications on the preliminary results and potential impact of the research, and an edited truly European volume on Roman Republican Colonization, the research in Italy has led to the inauguration of a Research and Study Centre in one of the research areas together with the comune of Jelsi (Campobasso). This Centre is the result of the fertile collaboration between archaeologists and the modern inhabitants of the research area, and serves as a base for study of groups of students and researchers, as well as point of contact and information exchange between the local community and the international researchers.
