Follow the latest excavation reports, landscape analyses and research notes from the Landscapes of Early Roman Colonization project as our team reconstructs how Roman settlers reshaped land, water and settlement across Italy and the western Mediterranean.
Each entry summarizes a fieldwork campaign, a laboratory result or a interpretive question raised by our researchers. Entries are added as soon as data has been checked and discussed within the team.
Our survey transects recorded linear field boundaries that follow the orientation of planned Roman land division. The entry describes how we combined aerial imagery with ground observations to test which grid segments belong to the original colonial allocation.
Sediment cores taken from former drainage channels reveal shifts in erosion and deposition after colonization began. This entry presents the sampling protocol and the first radiocarbon sequence used to date those changes.
Excavations at a small farmstead exposed postholes, storage pits and a compacted yard surface. The entry compares the site layout with other colonial settlements and considers how households organized labour on newly allocated plots.
Roads did more than connect towns; they shaped where farms, markets and drainage works appeared. In this entry the team reviews competing interpretations of the road network and outlines the questions for the next phase of research.
Milestones from the project so far, shown in the order in which the research unfolded.
The team compiled archival maps, historic land records and existing excavation reports to define the study areas and the research questions.
Field walking, geophysical survey and coring provided the first physical evidence of drainage, field systems and settlement distribution.
Environmental, archaeological and documentary data are now being combined in a shared spatial model to test colonial land management strategies.
Short answers to common questions about how entries are prepared and reviewed.
New entries appear when fieldwork results or laboratory analyses have been checked by at least two team members. During active campaigns this can mean several entries per month.
Summaries are public, and the underlying datasets are described in our publications so that other researchers can assess the methods and reuse the results.
Entries are written by the researchers responsible for each strand of work, including Tesse Stek, Jeremia Pelgrom and colleagues in the wider team listed on our team page.
The feed makes it possible to follow how a single survey result becomes part of the wider interpretation of colonial land division.
Project Collaborator
Clear, concise entries that show both the evidence and the uncertainty behind it. A useful companion to the full publications.
Research Partner
Read the full blog for longer reflections, or explore the activity log to see where the team is working next.