The villa-mansio in the Late Antique Mediterranean: between historiographical creation and archaeological impotence

In the traditional “topographical” approach, centred on the identification of the places recorded in the ancient itineraria, several rural complexes perfectly matching the model of villa rustica were classified as «mansiones», a term conventionally used to define an idealised type of road-station. Consequently, some villas have been withheld as a typological model of “mansio”. More recently, an increasing number of rural complexes has been classified as villa-mansio. The topic has attracted the attention of a few scholars, but a systematic review and a critical discussion is still awaited. This will be attempted here in the light of a few case-studies of rural complexes from late-antique South-Western Mediterranean.