City and country in the Roman world

Abstract

This chapter explores town–country relations in the Roman world. Drawing on economic geography and using archaeological case studies, it argues that current juridical definitions of Roman cities (which create a binary opposition between city and country) are less useful in exploring Roman settlement systems in terms of demography and central place systems. The main archaeological approaches for evaluating regional and macro-regional developments in settlement and economy, especially archaeological field survey, are introduced. A comparative assessment of archaeological evidence from central Italy, Roman Greece, and Germania Inferior and adjacent Gallia Belgica shows significant variations among these regions in terms of central place landscapes, agricultural practices, and economic and demographic developments. Although Roman conquest led to unprecedented empire-wide changes in town and country alike, with increased levels of urbanization and agricultural specialization, these changes only in part fit current economic models such as the consumer–city and taxes-and-trade models.

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