FROM THE CITY TO ITS TERRITORY: RECONSTRUCTING THE ROMAN LANDSCAPE OF VEII

Veii was the first city of Etruria conquered by Rome in 396 BC. Many are the resources that tell how the event took place but we still don’t know exactly what happened to the plateau and the hinterland as they don’t always match with the evidences. Futhermore, the etruscan and roman remains of the urban and rural settlement are not longer visible, while the natural enviroment has grown up and the archaeological evidences have become part of a hidden palinsest to explore. Over the years the urban and territorial area has been investigated by antiquarians, topographers and archaeologists using different techniques such as surface survey, geophysical prospection, excavations and aerial photography that led to the production of a large amount of ‘legacy’ data. Integrating the datasets of these researches into an unique Informatic System is becoming essential to manage and, most of all, to understand the ancient multilayered landscape. Only by changing the focus, from monumental to territorial scale, it could be possible to examinate the roman impact on the territory from the conquest to its abandonment, during the 4th century AD. Analysing and reconstructing the entire archaeological settlement will allow us to address different questions concerning the definition of possible limits of the ager veientanus or the use of the space on a social, economic and cultural point of view.