Missing persons? Models of Mediterranean Regional Survey and Ancient Populations

Testing settlement models in the early Roman colonial landscapes of Venusia (291 B.C.), Cosa (273 B.C.) and Aesernia (263 B.C.)

“…In particular, if we compare the datasets against literary information about the number of colonists sent to the territories in question (Pelgrom 2008(Pelgrom , 2012(Pelgrom , 2013, it is evident that, as a rule, field surveys have mapped only a fraction of early colonial sites. In the past, these extremely low recovery rates were attributed to the methodological difficulties of recognizing small, simple rural dwellings in the survey record (Cambi 1999;Millett 1991;Rathbone 1981Rathbone , 2008Witcher 2011). Recently, however, an alternative solution to the "missing sites" problem has been suggested, namely, that colonial communities may have adopted settlement strategies that significantly differ from those conventionally envisaged.…”

A Millennium of Resilience, Vulnerability and Sustainability at Rome, c. 200 BCE-800 CE

“…I believe we should, at least in the period from Augustus to Aurelian, view this phenomenon as one city of different densities, an extended urban landscape, where it was hard to know 'up to what point it is still the city and where it ceases to be the city; so closely is the city connected with the country, giving the beholder the impression of a city stretching out 29 Fletcher 1995;Fletcher 2009. 30 Witcher 2005Malmberg, Bjur 2009;Dyson 2010, 327;Malmberg, Bjur 2011;Witcher 2011;De Ligt 2012;Malmberg 2015;Witcher 2017;Witcher 2020, 172, 195. 31 Malmberg 2021, with references to previous research.…”

The Economy of Laetanian Wine: A Conceptual Framework to Analyse an Intensive/Specialized Winegrowing Production System and Trade (First Century BC to Third Century AD)

“…This serves to calculate, on one hand, the needs of foodstuffs in terms of maintenance and self-consumption and, on the other hand, the workforce availability necessary to make the different activities that allows the wine intensive system of production, distribution and trade works. In this same sense, some scholars attempted to convert the results obtained from archaeological excavations and field-surveys into demographic data (Witcher 2005(Witcher , 2008(Witcher , 2011. Thus, some analyses achieve to develop ranges of estimated inhabitants by settlement typologies, despite important methodological problems, such as the nature of the samples and the partial data obtained, due to the fact that not the entire territory can be excavated or prospected properly and not all domestic or habitational spaces have been preserved (Table 8.3).…”