The plant landscape of Roman Tuscany and the peasant agricultural strategies in the Cinigiano area (central Italy)

In Cinigiano (Grosseto, southern Tuscany, Italy), the archaeobotanical study of small rural sites have been investigated to understand the relationships between Roman peasant farmers and the environment of central Italy. The research was carried out within an interdisciplinary project, the Roman Peasant Project, that addressed the lives of Roman rural smallholders (Bowes et al. 2011, 2017). Microscopical and macroscopical plant remains were collected from 8 sites and interpreted in the context of their archaeological and chronological frameworks (Rattighieri et al. 2013; Bowes et al. 2015). The archaeobotanical material describes a period of intensive land use in the late Republican/early Imperial period, with possible use of convertible agriculture strategies. ... Altogether, the archaeobotanical data from the small agro-processing and farm sites show that the Roman-period occupation was mostly marked by a well-developed and complex agrarian landscape. These archaeobotanical data describe a sophisticated micro-management of the land including intensive agricultural systems with cultivation and breeding activities. Pollen evidence points towards a great importance of the animal husbandry as large part of land was allocated to a grazed pasture (Bowes et al. 2015).