Roman Landscape and settlement dynamics of Istrian colonial agers

Acronym: RoLand 

Research Project of the Croatian Science Foundation, IP-2022-10-5496  

Project Duration: Four years, from December 22, 2023, to December 21, 2027 

Institution: Juraj Dobrila University of Pula

                     Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Landscape Archaeology

Project Summary

The project aims to contextualize the Roman rural sites of Pula and Poreč ager in their natural and historical environment, regarding chronological, demographic, economic and other social and natural processes. Data necessary for chronological, typological, topographic and any other classifications will be obtained with archaeological fieldwork. An increase in the amount of topographical data on the Roman rural sites of the Pula and Poreč agers is expected, which will result in the systematization of data in a GIS environment. Geophysical prospecting will provide insight into the distribution and ground plan of Roman rural architecture at selected sites. Geoarchaeological analysis will identify the main depositional processes that took place in the last two millennia and will assess the impact of soil erosion on the slopes with the aim of understanding the patterns of Roman sites, and to gain insight into environmental transformations in the last two millennia. The purpose of the archaeobotanical analysis of the selected sites is to reconstruct the environment, diet, and agricultural activities. The results of the ceramic analysis will provide the type and chronology of ceramic finds and the determination of the numerical occurrence of certain types, which can provide information about the nature of a particular site, the activities that were carried out there, and the wider exchange networks.