Between Land and Sky—A Study of the Orientation of Roman Centuriations in Italy

Abstract

The centuriations were public lands delimited and divided in regular lots by Rome as a result of the conquest but also the conceptual appropriation of new territories, which were transformed according to particular ideas of space. Despite previous works rejecting the astronomical hypothesis for the orientation of Roman centuriations, recent publications have supported the role of particular astronomical phenomena in the design of Roman land and urbanism in Italy. The aim of this work is to determine whether the orientation of the centuriations follows any pattern, and to determine the precepts, if any, underlying the election of privileged directions. We present a statistical study of the orientation of 67 centuriations in Italy—the largest sample of this type ever studied in this region—that considers the conditions of the surrounding environment together with a comparative analysis with a dataset of the same type that includes 52 Italian Roman towns. The results show interesting patterns shared by both centuriations and towns, some of them coinciding with relevant astronomical events in the Roman context, together with others in which differentrequirements would have been prioritized. In summary, we should consider the sky as an element involved in the creation of Roman urban and rural spaces.

Emerging Empires and Opportunistic Land-Use Legacies: Testing a New Model on Rome's Conquest and Colonization Through Archaeological Survey Data in the Territories of Cosa and Tarraco

“…Survey research undertaken later in Tarraco (Prevosti and Guitart, 2011) was not considered in this paper as it is only partly accessible (the volume with the full dataset is forthcoming, Schneider, 2017: 15). Moreover, since the dating of land-division systems is notoriously difficult to establish (Celuzza and Regoli, 1985: 49-53;Pelgrom, 2008Pelgrom, , 2018Rodríguez-Antón, Magli, González-García, 2023), the previous hypothetical reconstructions of centuriation systems were not considered in settlement pattern analysis. 8 Systematic field-walking survey projects were conducted in both regions during the late '70s, '80s and early '90s by teams that belonged to the same emerging Anglo-American survey school.…”

“…Some scholars have interpreted this concentration as farms regularly distributed according to land-division systems, 12 while other scholars have posited this as a possible nucleated settlement or village (Pelgrom, 2008;Casarotto, Pelgrom, Stek, 2016). Whether this agglomeration represents an agricultural village, a loose group of dispersed farms or a combination of various settlement types (settled contemporaneously or at different intervals during the Republican period) (Chisholm, 1968;Roberts, 1996), it is interesting that it occurred in the area within the ager that shows a remarkable use in the Archaic period (6th-5th century BC) and an abandonment or scarce use in the 4th century BC before the arrival of the colonists (Carandini et al, 2002: 291-3;Attolini et al, 1982;Celuzza and Regoli, 1982) (Fig. 3).…”