ARQUEOLOGIA RURAL DA ITÁLIA ROMANA

My objective in this article is to analyze the development of the rural archeology of Roman Italy. The article does not describe the underlying historical realities of the rural world of the Peninsula, nor the expansion of agriculture or the resultant social conflicts in the country. My interest is properly historiographic. I wish to show the slow development of an archeology specifically turned to the rural world, and to emphasize its contribution to the study of Roman History, but also, as we will see, to reflect upon the limits that the archeological documentation imposes to our attempts of reconstructing the past