The Rural Foundations of The Roman Economy. New Approaches to Rome’s Ancient Countryside from the Archaic to the Early Imperial Period

The aim of the AIAC 2018 session “The Rural Foundations of the Roman Economy, new approaches to Rome's ancient countryside from the Archaic to the Early Imperial period” was to bring together methodologically informed, data-driven studies to shed light on the drivers and performance of the Central Italian rural economy during the Archaic to Imperial periods. The session resulted in a coherent collection of papers by a broad range of international scholars in the field who approach the Roman agricultural economy from various disciplinary angles and at different scales. The collection has a sharp focus on the suburbium of Rome sensu lato. Topics range from rural settlement dispersal, economic and demographic modelling to survey artefact analysis and the study of pollen and plant macro-remains.