The Landscape and Settlement Pattern of the Tiber Delta. Confronting the Evidence

Kristian Strutt

Archaeological work on the Tiber Delta to the south-west of Rome has generally focused on key urban sites, dating to the Republican period and after, with a few key projects aimed at assessing the nature of prehistoric settlement in the area, and excluding the development of the landscape and a broader understanding of the context of the pattern of settlement within the surrounding environment. Much of this approach has been dictated by the classical archaeological approach to the past in Italy, and the visibility of archaeological remains in the study area. However the development of the Tiber Delta and the nature of settlement and use of resources in this crucial area need to be understood in a landscape context.

To assess the relationship between the geomorphology of the Lower Tiber and the changing pattern of settlement, a strategy has been developed incorporating the published and archived data for sites in the study area, and the extensive remotely sensed data for the zone including the RAF air photographs taken between 1943 and 1944, and map data held by the Provincia di Roma. The research to date can demonstrate that the wetland of the Tiber delta, far from representing an unpopulated landscape prior to the development of Ostia Antica and Portus, was an important area for settlement and the exploitation of resources, for hunting, fishing, grazing and salt production, with evidence for settlement dating from the late Neolithic onwards, and potential for work to assess the presence of material dating to the Mesolithic. The ethnographic record for the use of the area in the late 19th century and early 20th century, a period of time when the nature of the river floodplain and delta were changing irreversibly through the process of Bonificazione also offers an insight into the nature of settlement in this diverse landscape zone.