The project’s results indicate that a landscape once dominated by small, family-run, farms, each cultivating small plots of land, gradually transformed through the three phases of the Roman imperial period (Early, 30 BC-AD 120: 205 sites; Mid, AD 120-260: 174 sites; Late, AD 260-440: 146 sites) into one featuring large agricultural estates involved in extensive farming practices. In light of historical records it seems likely that affluent investors bought up much of the land of failing smallholders, expanding the capacity of their own agricultural enterprises and leasing out properties to poorer farmers. Local wealth, power, and influence became concentrated in the hands of a limited number of elite landowners. Yet despite this process, small low-status sites remained the most abundant class of rural habitation even in the Late Imperial period and many middle-ranking sites endured without a break in occupation even into Late Antique times (AD 440-700: 77 sites in total). The resilience of wide sections of the rural community, even in the face of external threats from Longobards and others, should not be underestimated, but significantly a considerable proportion of Tuscania’s hinterland of cultivated fields had reverted to scrub and woodland by the Late Antique period.

The primary technique employed in the project was ‘field walking’: systematically collecting archaeological artefacts lying on the ground surface, especially in ploughsoil.The method has been widely employed by archaeologists working around the Mediterranean to map past settlement especially because of the suitability of its semi-arid landscapes for this kind of ground searching.An apparently simple technique, systematic archaeological survey in fact has to deal with a wide range of biasing factors as every stage, so this chapter describes the decisions we took and the methods we employed, and assesses their implications for the quality of the information retrieved: defining the study area (totalling 353 km2);the employment of three sampling methods (Transect, Random and Judgement, totalling 97 km2) to survey the landscape; the decisions we took about the intensity of search and artefact collection methods (41.5 km2 were searched) and about defining ‘sites’- assumed foci of activity -versus ‘off-site’ or sporadic material thought to indicateland use activities such as manuring; and in our subsequent analyses of the materials collected, the methods we used to try to minimize the biasing effects of the surface archaeology of different periods of the past being differentially prolific and/or differentially visible.

The shock occasioned by the Arab sack of Saint Peter’s and San Paolo fuori le mura in August 846 serves as the backdrop for the unprecedented building activities of Pope Leo IV (847–855), best known for his construction of fortifications to enclose the entire area around Saint Peter’s in what subsequently came to be known as the ‘Leonine city’. This was the only extension ever made to Rome’s Aurelian walls of the late third century. Considerable resources were also expended on making good the losses of gold and silver liturgical vessels, silk textiles and other furnishings. New church projects included Santi Quattro Coronati and Santa Maria Nova. Also dating from his reign, and signalling a shift in patronage to become more evident in the years to follow, is a subsidiary chapel in the excavated lower church of San Clemente, which includes the pope’s portrait. Consideration is given to the rationale for the installation of this chapel, possibly with a relic from the site of Christ’s Ascension prominently displayed above its altar.

Chapter two begins a series of three case studies centered on temporalties of ruination expressed in the Hebrew Bible. The focus of this chapter is the ancient site of Shiloh, a settlement destroyed relatively early according to the biblical writers and which remained in ruins for an extended period in time. This study then connects the many biblical references to Shiloh long after its downfall to different modes of remembrance.