Countryside, peasants and slaves around Rome. People, agriculture and demography in the suburbium

The so-called ‘Roman Campagna’ and the countryside surrounding Rome have always been of interest to antiquarians and scholars. It is a privileged area for historical research because of the wealth of information available for analysing the relationship between town and country from the earliest times. However, recent research carried out by the Sapienza University of Rome has added to the already considerable documentary corpus a systematic knowledge of all the archaeological documents relating to ancient sites and infrastructures within a nine-mile radius of the sixth-century BCE city walls. This makes it possible to reconstruct the history of rural settlement patterns and their evolution. The diachronic distribution of goods and the relationship between settlement types and potential agricultural productivity are also considered in a unified narrative of changing suburban landscapes. The aim of this paper is to discuss how such an approach can contribute to a diachronic reconstruction of the periods, modes and processes that structured suburban topography, demography, economy and social configurations, from the earliest phases of a ‘Roman’ rural system to its ultimate dismantling.