Challenging marginality: intensive field survey and long-term landscape analysis in an upland inter-mountain basin (Cicolano-Italy)

Marginality has proved to be a relative issue, and intensive and systematic archaeological surface surveys are often able to enhance hidden landscapes and bring whole regions or microregions back to the main historical narrative. The Cicolano Survey research project aims at the reconstruction of the long-term human settling in the upland area gravitating around the Corvaro plain , within the wider Cicolan o r egion, with particu la r inter est in t he diach ronic man-e nvironment interaction, for the human eco-dynamics, for past land-use, for rural landscape transformations and the movement in the area, linked to transhumance routes. In four field seasons intensive and systematic artefact surface surveys were carried out in sampling areas of the plain as well as on the surrounding mountain areas. Systematic research was also carried out on the Frontino hill, a long-life fortified defensive high spot overlo oking the upland Corvaro plain. Survey results offer a previously unknown picture of an extensively occupied landscape in the Roman period, when the upland people inhabiting the Cicolano, never fully Romanised in a political sense, made th ei r strong arc haeological appearance sho wing a disper se d settlement pattern, which follows the less clearly visible lines of the pre-Roman period landscape.