Sensing Ruralscapes. Third-Wave Archaeological Survey in the Mediterranean Area

The present contribution discusses the so-called ‘third wave’ of archaeological survey, drawing attention to the wide gap between the development and implementation or archaeological research within townscapes as compared with rural landscapes in the Mediterranean area. The first part of the discussion sum-marises the development of landscape studies and survey methods during the last century, critically highlighting the outcomes and limitations of past experience. The paper then presents the initial results of the Emptyscapes Project, an interdisci-plinary program of survey and interpretation work designed to stimulate changes in the way in which archaeologists, in Italy but also more generally within the Mediterranean world, study the archaeology of the rural countryside, moving from an essentially site-based approach to a truly landscape-scale perspective. The first results of the project have made it possible to challenge past landscape paradigms and to move towards a more complex and comprehensive understanding of a stretch of lowland rural landscape in southern Tuscany. In doing so the project has emphasised the extent to which choices about the methodological and technological framework of the work may to a certain extent predetermine the archaeological results and influence the archaeological questions that can be asked or answered.