Figures in an Imperial Landscape: Ecological and Societal Factors on Settlement Patterns and Agriculture in Roman Italy

This chapter investigates trends in settlement patterns and urban occupation in eastern Cisalpine Gaul and Etruria (second-fifth centuries CE) in order to assess whether the decline in rural (and urban) settlements observed in parts of Italy from the third century onwards was a result of post-Antonine plague demographic collapse, climate change, or the outcome of other societal and political processes. The case studies discussed stress the high degree of regional differentiation and complexity that can be reconstructed for Roman imperial Italy on the basis of archaeological data. While it is not easy to identify the cause of the empirical phenomena that one can infer from the archaeology, the data from the two case studies suggest that social and economic factors reflecting different regional realities are the most plausible explanation of the phenomena discernible in the archaeological record.