Paesaggi di Magna Grecia

From 2000 until 2005 a team of the University of Calabria carried out, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologica della Calabria, a research proect aiming at the reconstruction of ancient rural landscapes in defined sectors of inner and coastal Sibaritide. Intensive archaeological survey has been conducted in two different sample areas in the countryside around the plain occupied by the ancient city of Sybaris (territories of modern centres of Castrovillari and Amendolara). The amount of the new evidence collected, together with the re-assessment of previously legacy data allowed the proposition of a reconstruction for the rural settlement patterns and history in these investigated areas. In this paper a possible process of progressive and more and more intensive rural infilling will be also presented. The diachronic development of rural landscapes will be discussed, considering the varied types of settlements, comparing the different situations in the investigated areas and assuming that differentiation and analogies, continuity and discontinuity in this process could be related to historical and institutional events.