I segni delle trasformazioni del paesaggio antico tra città e campagna

Urban landscapes constitute part of the diverse landscapes of the past. Archaeological elements and past features included in the contemporary urban context (city-scape) have to be read as signs of the past landscape life, and therefore as traces of the environmental and anthropic transformations which constitute the peculiar history of the landscape. Archaeological features, either monuments or documents, are anthropical material signs, which in the past landscapes constituted either alive components or abandoned or reused features. As they represent the material traces useful to reconstruct landscape history, archaeological evidence must be included in the diverse historical contexts and archaeological features must be spatially linked to each other and to other landscape elements. The area of Rome examined in this paper is constituted by diverse landscapes. The history of its landscape character is marked by physical and cultural features referring alternatively to city and countryside contexts. During time Via Ostiense and its surroundings shifted from a suburban area outside the city wall, marked by a character of open rural countryside crossed by the Tiber river, to an area which within a few decades was more or less urbanised. The available archaeological evidence should be read within this twofold and continuously changing context of fluctuating boundaries between city and countryside.