Le forme del popolamento rurale del Cervese tra la fine dell’età romana e il Medioevo

This paper examines the transformation of rural settlement patterns in the Cervia area (northern Adriatic Italy) between the end of the Roman period and the Middle Ages, drawing on the preliminary results of the ongoing Archeologia a Cervia project. Previous scholarship, largely based on written sources and non-systematic archaeological evidence, has long assumed the persistence of dispersed Roman settlement forms in Romagna well into the medieval period, in contrast to the earlier emergence of nucleated villages in neighbouring regions. Through a systematic and stratified surface survey covering approximately 10.5 km² of the municipal territory, this research provides new archaeological data that challenge this traditional model. The survey documented 22 sites ranging from the Iron Age to the modern period, many of them previously unknown, revealing a high degree of variability in settlement forms. Alongside small farms and villas with roots in the Iron Age and Roman periods, large and complex sites—possibly identifiable as vici—were already present in Roman times. Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, patterns of continuity, abandonment, and new foundations coexisted, with marked differences between the coastal zone and the inland areas. While the coastal settlements experienced a contraction between the 5th and 7th centuries CE, the inland areas show sustained occupation and early processes of population concentration from the 8th–9th centuries onwards. Overall, the evidence situates the Cervia countryside within broader regional dynamics of early settlement nucleation in Romagna, highlighting a more complex and dynamic rural landscape than previously assumed.