Understanding the town-territory relationship: A case-study from Lusitania

The town-country relationship can be analysed from the spatial or from the conceptual point of view, as towns, as well as suburbia, can be considered as places or as functions. Both these approaches claim a sturdy state of the art, with exponentially enriching literature and case-studies. During the last 15 years of archaeological research in and around the deserted Roman town of Ammaia, in Portugal, an interdisciplinary team has dealt with these theoretical and methodological issues, and the widest range of fieldwork approaches has been deployed to collect data about the town and its hinterland, and to understand the interactions between the urban centre and its surrounding landscape. Legacy data studies, multidisciplinary investigation, geoarchaeological survey, archaeological diagnostics, excavations and material processing contribute to make of Ammaia and its territory one of the best known Roman civitates in the Iberian peninsula. The richness and diversification of the archaeological and historical questionnaires stand up for the relevance of this case-study. In this paper, we will focus only on the suburbium of Ammaia, as it has never been presented in its entirety and has never been analysed in a comparative perspective. By crossing data from survey, excavations and material studies, we will attempt a reconstruction of landscapes of productive activities, of primary raw material catchment, of funerary zones and of communication networks. The peculiarity of this case-study lies in the heterogeneity and richness of the datasets. The integration that has been sought, not only between different survey methodologies, but also with other kinds of evidence, material and immaterial, was driven by the concerns about understanding the social and economic aspects of urban agglomerations. These aspects can be investigated also by means of determining the patterns of settlement around any town. In any case, it is clear that suburbia, like towns, cannot be studied simply as artefacts but need to be considered as socio-economic and political systems.