From Space to Place: the Aiali project (Tuscany-Italy)

The place name Aiali is sited on lowland between the medieval town of Grosseto and the Roman town of Roselle in central Italy. The site discussed in this paper was detected from the air during the Aerial Archaeology Research School organised by the University of Siena in 2001. Aerial survey allowed us to recognise an area within which the growth of the wheat varied in such a way as to reveal an articulated group of traces that made up the plan of a complex of structures interpreted as a Roman villa, 4 hectares in extent. In the following years Aiali has become the most important test site for the Laboratory of Landscape Archaeology and Remote Sensing at Grosseto. Since 2001 we have collected, processed and interpreted many different kinds of data: Quickbird-2 satellite imagery, historical and recent vertical coverage (from 1954 to 2001), oblique air photographs in various years, seasons and lighting condition; field-walking survey, and geophysical survey (magnetometry, GPR, EM, ERT). One intention of the Aiali project is to apply the highest available level and intensity of archaeological prospection methods on a large, complex and stratified site, producing material from the from Etruscan, Roman and Medieval periods. At the same time Aiali forms the starting point for a more wide-ranging approach to the study of the landscape between Grosseto and Roselle.