The Roman Colonisation and Urbanisation of Central Adriatic Italy

Lectio magistralis di Frank Vermeulen, Department of Archaeology, Gent University, Belgio

Saluti
Giuseppe Sassatelli, Presidente del Centro Studi per l'Archeologia dell'Adriatico
Lanfranco Gualtieri, Presidente della Fondazione Flaminia

Introduzione
Giuseppe Lepore, Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà

The study of the Romanisation of central Adriatic Italy, between the third and first centuries BC, and culminating in the reign of Augustus, is essential to decipher different processes of Roman and Latin colonisation and urbanisation in this region. This phase is marked here by the development of an extraordinary diversity of agglomerations and urban forms. Based on a recent analysis of some 40 Roman towns of the region, as well as on intensive archaeological field surveys in one of its most important valleys – of the river Potenza – the speaker will illustrate the impact of Rome on urban landscape dynamics in this pivotal part of Adriatic Italy.

The ex nihilo creation and relative fast development of Roman colonial towns, such as the coastal settlement Potentia, and the impressive influx of viritim and veteran colonists in and around the region’s inland towns, have created a real colonial landscape. Its urban centres, dynamic suburbia, and the networks of villages and farms that form the productive landscape supporting them, are now rapidly being revealed by way of new survey technologies, while 3D visualisations allow to understand the mark of Rome on the Italic communities living between the central Apennine mountains and the Adriatic Sea.