Geoarchaeological study of abandoned Roman urban and suburban contexts from central Adriatic Italy

Abstract

Over the past 15 years the Potenza Valley Survey project investigated Iron Age to Medieval settlement dynamics in the Central Adriatic Potenza Valley. Part of this research focuses on the Roman abandoned towns of Potentia and Trea by performing an integrated geoarchaeological study of their townscape. This largely noninvasive research consists of remote sensing analysis, geophysical surveys (magnetometry, electrical resistivity, and ground-penetrating radar), and geomorphological fieldwork such as microtopographic measurements and hand augering. The chosen techniques depend on the nature of each town and are integrated with more traditionally achieved research data. This paper presents the main interdisciplinary results of work on these two Roman towns and highlights the importance of obtaining complementary data and performing hand augering as a stratigraphic control of the remote sensing and geophysical results. Insights into the character and layout of the cities, the structural influence on the surrounding area, and the human-environment interactions and dynamics through time of both Roman cities could be achieved. Moreover, the results offer guidelines for conservation strategies of these abandoned towns and their suburbium, which are necessary to protect them from present-day threats such as agriculture and tourism. In this way the paper offers an insight in the tremendous potential of well-integrated geoarchaeological investigations of partly or fully abandoned urban contexts in the Mediterranean area and beyond.

Digitising Legacy Field Survey Data: A Methodological Approach Based on Student Internships

“…[11])), the variable landscape morphologies and visibility conditions covered by these surveys, or a combination of these factors. More research into this aspect is necessary to assess how different methodologies or landscape geomorphologies may affect the number of discovered sites in the surveys analysed during our internships and how possible research biases may alter our perception of the heritage potential of a given region or country [65][66][67][68][69][70][71].…”

Remote Sensing of Human–Environment Interactions in Global Change Research: A Review of Advances, Challenges and Future Directions

“…Most often studies will use only satellite imagery (70% of the studies surveyed in this work), but when analyzing the corpus for the number of platforms used, those that have utilized two kinds of remote sensing products most often combine aerial imagery with satellite imagery [10,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], though two studies combine satellite imagery with aerial LiDAR. For example, Ossola & Hopton [33] discuss the use of multi-temporal LiDAR to quantify urban tree loss; Vermeulen et al [34] incorporate a LiDAR DEM in a geoarcheological assessment, Ning et al [35] combined satellite and UAV imagery to assess land use change in China, Vermeulen et al [34] utilized a combination of satellite, aerial, and UAV imagery, as well as imagery obtained with a helikite. McCoy [36] discusses the use of satellite imagery in conjunction with airborne and terrestrial LiDAR to document archeological sites in Polynesia, pointing to the overall growth in data fusion between electro-optical or passive and active remote sensing platforms to extract variables that can be utilized in more complex modeling exercises.…”

“…Eleven studies returned in our search focus on the use of remote sensing to analyze past human environmental interactions or for studying archeological sites [23,24,28,36,[93][94][95][96][97]. Some studies use remote sensing and other methods for past human occupation and landscape reconstruction in deserts [24,97], for determining historical land use dynamics [96], for identifying trends in past urban growth [23,34], settlement distribution and seasonal flooding [95], or differentiating modern vs. ancient agricultural terraces [76]. A series of studies by Lombardo et al [28,93,94] used satellite imagery to identify paleo-structures to assess how environmental conditions influenced human settlement and societal development [94] and how geoecology influenced social complexity [28] to help inform future conservation and development [93].…”

Special issue of Geoarchaeology: Urban geoarchaeology in the Mediterranean Basin

“…Accordingly the architecture of the evolving core of the site, an accretion of dominantly anthropogenic contributions, provided a broad index of development and eventual collapse of the preindustrial era footprint. In other urban sites, DEM and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) mapping plotted a variety of urban core, suburban, and even exurban features (e.g., Mozzi et al., ; Tallón Armada et al., ; Vermuelen et al., ). It has been emphasized elsewhere that none of the remote imaging technologies are without flaws, and thus there is a need to apply multidisciplinary mapping technologies supported by ground truthing wherever possible.…”

“…It is well known that, in most fields of scientific research, interdisciplinary approaches using multiple methodologies tend to be highly productive. This is particularly true for geoarchaeological research where both geological and archaeological practices converge into a single discipline with specific characteristics, aims, and procedures (see Bini et al., ; Vermeulen et al., ). The reconstruction of urban landscapes is often accomplished with greater clarity by integrating invasive (archaeological excavation) and noninvasive approaches, such as archaeological survey, aerial/space remote sensing, geophysical surveys, and geomorphological fieldwork as well as microtopographic measurements and hand augering.…”