EMPTYSCAPES. Towards Filling Gaps in Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology

The aim of the project is to use the ‘traditional’ methods of landscape survey in partnership with large-scale geophysical prospection, in due course airborne laser scanning, geo-archaeological and bio-archaeological. The research area is a stretch of a rural valley near the ancient city of Rusellae in southern Tuscany exploring completely new ground of a rural emptyscape. The Etruscan and Roman city of Rusellae has been relatively well explored in the past, with a history running in fairly well-defined phases of foundation, elaboration and decline from the 8th or 9th centuries BC to the early 12th century AD, when primacy and the local bishopric were ceded to the growing town of Grosseto a few km to the south-west. At least some of the developments within the ancient city are known or suspected to have been matched by developments or transformations within the open landscape of the valley, including the foundation and decline of rural villas and (possibly) of centuriation during the Roman period. Villages of one kind or another may also have been present during the Iron Age and Early Medieval periods, though their location and form remain unclear. Today, the slopes either side of the valley are largely wooded. The relatively flat and topographically undistinctive landscape between present-day Grosseto and the site of Rusellae is now displays a rotating mixture of arable cultivation and pasture, dotted with small areas of woodland, vineyards and olive cultivation. A trapeze-shaped sample transect covering 2500 ha of the valley and hillslopes to the south-east of Rusellae was chosen as offering opportunities to explore a range of environmental and archaeological contexts, with lowland fields appropriate for magnetic survey flanked by wooded hillslopes which in due course will act as a test-bed for high-resolution laser scanning.