Project description
Investigating the rural economic drivers of Roman Italy
While evidence of Roman economic growth is well-documented, the specific agro-pastoral strategies that sustained this transcontinental empire remain poorly understood. The ERC-funded FEROCI project investigates the transformative shifts in Roman agro-pastoral practices between 600 BC and AD 200. It uses cutting-edge biomolecular, zooarchaeological and high-resolution osteological analyses to reconstruct ancient herding regimes and links these practices to land-use patterns. Ultimately, it aims to bridge the gap between material remains, archaeological landscape data and ancient texts, providing a quantitative framework to explain how the organisation of rural production shaped the economic and territorial trajectory of the Roman Empire. These findings will provide the missing link in our understanding of the rural foundations of Mediterranean civilisation.
Objective
At the turn of the first millennium AD, Italy formed the heart of Europe’s first transcontinental empire, with Rome at its core. The social, economic, and demographic growth that enabled the emergence of early urban states and their aggregation into Roman hegemony was fuelled by dramatic increases in rural production. While abundant archaeological evidence illustrates changes in the peninsula’s productive landscape, and ancient texts offer a litany of elite opinions on best agronomic practice, current frameworks have yet to address how these major increases in output were achieved. This significant lacuna in our understanding of farming – the foundation of ancient society, an essential driver of growth, and the most important nexus between humans and their environment – is a major gap that impedes research in and beyond the rural landscape: a gap that this project will fill.
FEROCI generates new direct evidence for agro-pastoral practice, using livestock as a lens to investigate surplus production, territorial integration, and land use across a dynamic period of urbanisation and political expansion (600 BC–AD 200). The project reconstructs herding regimes via biomolecular, zooarchaeological, and non-destructive high-resolution osteological analyses of the excavated remains of livestock, and then leverages this new corpus of data to quantitatively and spatially address the relationship between husbandry, settlement systems, and the environment. In doing so, FEROCI creates an entirely new line of evidence on rural praxis, and integrates it with the most active area of research on Italian agriculture – landscape dynamics – to effect a step change in understanding of the agro-pastoral systems at foundation of ancient society, and how shifts in their organisation shaped economic growth and territorial expansion from urbanisation to nascent empire.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.