L’ager di Aquinum: analisi dei contesti ed evoluzione diacronica del paesaggio antico
This thesis investigates the settlement dynamics of the Ager Aquinas (southern Lazio, province of Frosinone) through a diachronic, multi-scalar landscape archaeology approach. The research covers five municipalities across 56 square kilometers, reorganizing previously published data and integrating a substantial body of unpublished evidence from both field surveys and excavations.
The dataset, structured according to chronotypological and topographical criteria, is interpreted within a long-term perspective that treats ecological contexts, social practices, and historical processes as interdependent variables. The Ager Aquinas functions as an intermediate analytical scale between the urban transformations of Aquinum — particularly the progressive crisis of urbanitas models — and the broader territorial dynamics of southern Lazio. Comparative analysis with neighboring centers in the middle Liri Valley (Interamna Lirenas, Fabrateria Nova, Casinum) situates Aquinum within a network of interconnected urban and semi-urban landscapes, revealing how analogous settlement patterns produce divergent outcomes depending on local ecological, political, and infrastructural conditions.
The methodological framework is hybrid and interdisciplinary, drawing on the Dutch school of landscape archaeology (Pontine Region Project), Italian aerotopographic traditions, and an extensive corpus of aerial photographs. Emergency excavations on threatened heritage sites provided crucial stratigraphic data, refining the chronological sequence from the pre-Roman period through the Middle Ages.The study adopts an ecological approach to landscape, interpreting different categories of archaeological evidence — sites, infrastructure, landscape units — as dynamic components of a historicized socio-ecological system, in which pedological and hydrological factors interweave with human strategies of mobility and resource management. The concept of "taskscape" (sensu Tim Ingold) informs the understanding of the archaeological landscape as a processual construction shaped by the interaction of economic practices, settlement strategies, and environmental adaptations.
The critical analysis of over 600 archaeological contexts documents processes of diachronic territorial restructuring, from pre-Roman ethnic transitions — notably the Volscian-to-Sidicini shift — through the integrated Roman urban system, to the progressive fragmentation into rural territorial forms.