Ricerc@Sapienza

The research focuses on issues related to urbanization in central Apennines since pre-Roman times. In a region of rough morphology the Roman intervention strategy is cautious as to the land system economy (transhumance) and to urban planning (few small settlements). In inner centarl Italy new Roman towns are founded later than in other regions. The Roman city of Peltuinum on an almost flat land plateau lasts from Ist cent. B.C. till Late Antiquity, when a violent earthquake causes the end of the town system which changes into small scattered settlements. Based on the recovered data, the investigation expands from topographic and urban sphere to other fields: geological, economic, religious, and anthropological (cultural, physical). The research results show the passage from the micro to the macro-history. The geographic location and geohydrological characteristics, which in prehistoric age had made the site a stop point of the flocks, go on ensuring the city as a trade center in Roman Italy sheep tracks. After the 5th cent. A.D. seismic event, though loosing the status of city, the same prerogatives confirm this function in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and later up to the fifties of the last century (the end of transhumance). The analysis of the Roman city and of its heirs, the monasteries, allows to retrace not only the economic history of the area, but also the series of earthquakes which had important consequences in the regional history and on Rome itself. The research on ancient earthquakes and on the subsequent reconstruction has opened up other research fronts. One of noteworthy significance is related to the actual seismic situation: the archaeological data of the 5th cent. earthquake in Peltuinum matches with other data in inner Abruzzi region, helping to draw times and repeating of earthquakes aiming to seismic research.