The modern Via Cassia, now as in antiquity the great arterial road up through the heart of south-eastern Etruria, after crossing the Fosso dell'Olgiata less than a kilometre to the west of the north-western gate of Veii, climbs steadily for about 7 km. to cross the Monti Sabatini, the line of extinct volcanic craters that runs eastwards from Lake Bracciano, forming a natural northern boundary to the Roman Campagna. After cutting through the southern crest of the crater of Baccano, with its magnificent views southwards and eastwards over Rome towards Tivoli, Palestrina and the Alban Hills, the road drops into the crater, skirts round the east side of the former lake, and climbs again to the far rim, before dropping once more into the head of the Treia basin, on its way to Monterosi and Sutri.

From this vantage-point a whole new landscape is spread out before one (pl. XLVII). To the west and north-west, the tangle of volcanic hills that forms the northern limit of the Monti Sabatini, rising at its highest point to the conical peak of Monte Rocca Romana (612 m.); beyond and to the right of those, past Monterosi and filling the whole of the north-western horizon, some 10–15 km. distant, the spreading bulk of Monte Cimino (1053 m.), with its characteristically volcanic, twin-peaked profile; to the north and north-east, the gently rolling woods and fields of the Faliscan plain, deceptively smooth, stretching away to the distant Tiber.

La relazione discute sui modelli di sistemazione classica scoperti da recenti ed intensivi studi nella Valle Biferno nel Molise. Questo lavoro è parte di un'indagine pluriennale della sistemazione storica della valle, effettuato da archeologi storici e studiosi di scienze naturali. Due zone della valle inferiore sono illustrati come i nostri esempi (Fig. 2 e 3). In entrambe le zone un primo esempio di numerose piccole fattorie fu sostituito, nei recenti tempi Repubblicani, da un sistema di pochissime fattorie, ma molto più grandi (ville?), specialmente lontano dai maggiori centri urbani. Noi discutiamo tre modelli possibili per spiegare questa trasformazione in sistemazione: (1) pastorizia specializzata, o (2) produzione arabile aumentata, (entrambi controllate da ricche famiglie in città come Larino), o (3) nuclei di sistemazione senza cambiamenti nell'uso della terra. Noi presentiamo le ragioni per cui crediamo che il primo modello debba essere preferito per il presente.

The River Tiber at Rome flows between the gentle, converging slopes of two extinct volcanoes, the M. Sabatini to the northwest and the complex known as the Alban Hills to the southeast. On the southern flanks of the M. Sabatini lie the Etruscan cities of Veii and Caere (modern Cerveteri) as well as many smaller Etruscan settlements. To the south on the western and southern slopes of the Alban Hills are such ancient towns of northern Latium as Ardea, Lanuvio and Velletri. In these same areas is an extensive development of underground passageways locally known as cuniculi, structures which are the subject of this report.

The cuniculus was widely used for a variety of purposes during classical and pre-classical antiquity in central Italy. Livy reports on cuniculi driven as military devices to gain access to besieged cities. The traditional account of the lowering of the Alban Lake, as reported by Livy, dates from the early 4th century B.C. Excavations in urban centres have demonstrated that the Etruscans and later the Romans used cuniculi for drainage purposes, and also as lateral collectors of underground water in wells.

This report deals with extensive systems of cuniculi found in the Roman Campagna but not directly related to urban or domestic development.

Although commercial activity was one of the central features of Roman urban centres, the identification of commercial space in the archaeological record is not always straightforward. Identifications are routinely made through the application of Latin nomenclature to particular architectural typologies, almost inevitably leading to interpretations of space influenced by both textual and modern analogies, a practice which can be most clearly demonstrated by the so-called taberna. Using the taberna as a case-study, this paper explores the issues of Latin nomenclature and textual analogy; architectural typology and modern analogy; and material evidence and functional space, demonstrating the difficulties of identifying specific functions for so-called tabernae in the archaeological record. It argues that a much wider variety of spaces should be viewed as potentially commercial, since commerce — and especially retail — could take place almost anywhere, and suggests ways in which we could use the ancient evidence to look for commerce beyond the taberna, demonstrating the commercial potential of streets, porticoes, arcades, open spaces, and even private houses, since the separation of commercial and domestic activities in the ancient world was minimal.

The ancient Ager Capenas occupied the elongated triangle of land north of Rome enclosed by the line of the Via Flaminia, M. Soracte and the lower Tiber valley. The study of the archaeology and topography of the area, like that of the Roman Campagna as a whole, has been subject to great fluctuation of interest and emphasis. It was begun, in effect, by the antiquarians of the last century such as Dennis, Nibby and Gell. Then in the early years of this century Ashby took up the subject with an enthusiasm and application that quickly made him the undisputed authority. Since then interest has varied and no general revision of Ashby's topographical scheme has been attempted.

Archaeology in the more general sense of the study of the ancient inhabitants of an area from the remains of their civilisation has made little progress in a remote corner of the Campagna like the Ager Capenas, partly because of its inaccessibility, and partly because there has been no excavation to speak of and because the material visible above ground is so very limited both in variety and quality. There is, however, another side to the coin. The density and history of ordinary, everyday settlement, derived from the close observation of sites on the ground, are aspects of classical topography that are only now beginning to be exploited; and it is in an area such as the Roman Campagna that the greatest opportunities exist not only because the density of ancient settlement was very great, but also because such a high percentage of the material has survived.

The classical topography of the southern and central Ager Capenas has been described in the preceding volume of the Papers (PBSR, xxx, 1962, pp. 116–207, hereafter referred to as Pt. I). In this, the second section of the report, the field survey is concluded with a description of the northern Ager Capenas. There follows a discussion of the development of settlement within the area as a whole and some of the more interesting archaeological features discovered during the survey. The final section deals with the characteristics of the Roman buildings in the area and incorporates a report on the excavation of a small Roman farm in the central Ager Capenas.

To the list of acknowledgements already made (ibid., p. 117) I would like to add the names of Miss G. D. Jones, Mr. G. Duncan, Mr. W. A. C. Knowles and Mr. D. W. R. Ridgway, who all helped in the preparation of the second part of this report.

Recent research reveals what we term a ‘discourse of certainty’ regarding an assumed predominant socio-economic and cultural impact of Late Bronze Age Cypriotes or Mycenaeans on the local peoples of Sardinia and/or Sicily and Italy, not least in terms of a systematic, seaborne trading network extending from the Cyprus to the Tyrrhenian Sea. ‘Minimalist’ approaches to such a phenomenon have a long and venerable but more limited pedigree. In this study, we question why minimalist views have been so summarily dismissed in much current literature that seeks to evaluate an eastern Mediterranean presence or influence in the central Mediterranean. We focus on Sardinia, and on the range of Cypriot or ‘Cypriot-type’ materials found there. We consider the nature of the Cypriot–Sardinian relationship, and suggest that we should decouple foreign objects from foreign agents. We question several of the perceived Cypriot influences on Sardinian artefacts, and consider possible alternative mechanisms and routes of exchange between the east and central Mediterranean. We outline and discuss the array of presumed or actual Cypriot artefacts found on Sardinia, and argue that these do not add up to a ‘significant’ corpus of Late Cypriot materials and connections.

The conservatism of the Romans in matters of religion is a generally accepted truth and it is in many ways a very obvious truth. I have no intention of denying it. They set a very high value on their religious tradition; they sought to preserve and reproduce the ceremonies and customs inherited from their ancestors; they thought it wrong and even dangerous to abandon or neglect the many gods, goddesses and sacred places of which the city was full; they had no ideological framework which would have enabled them to think in terms of reforming and improving the national cult, as opposed to reviving and restoring it.

I say that this is an obvious truth, because some degree of conservatism in this sense seems to be an inevitable feature of the type of Graeco-Roman paganism of which the Roman State cult is one example. A system in which the emphasis falls primarily on the performance of ritual acts—not on the worshippers' belief, or religious emotions and experiences, or on theology or ethics—such a system inescapably makes it a primary value, though not necessarily the only value, that the known ritual should be successfully repeated. This in turn must imply some implicit respect for the past and for the tradition from which the ritual emerged. For the Romans of any generation, the real validation of their religion lay in the fact that it had worked: that their ancestors had won battles, survived crises, eaten dinners, begotten children and expanded their power by the practice of the self-same rites and ceremonies as they practised themselves. For the Romans of the last generation of the Republic, it was a fact that their ancestors had won more battles and eaten better dinners than anybody else.

Questo articolo prende in esame l'evoluzione delle pene per reati che comportano la fustigazione, l'essere messo in ceppi, i lavori forzati e, in alcuni casi, la mutilazione, tra il I secolo d.C. e la prima metá del IV secolo. L'articolo esplora l'applicazione o l'esenzione da tali pene in rapporto allo stato sociale, come le persone appartenenti alle classi piú alte (honestiores), le persone libere delle classi piú basse e gli schiavi. In particolare, l'articolo si chiede se l'applicazione di pene a persone libere delle classi piú basse dipendesse dalla dimunizione del numero di schiavi, e di conseguenza fosse un tentativo di passare a una forma di sfruttamento delle persone libere condannate. Uno studio dei diversi contesti amministrativi ed economici nei quali venivano scontate le diverse forme di condanna ai lavori forzati, ci porta alia conclusione che le funzioni economiche di quel tipo di condanna erano molto limitate. I lavori forzati erano ritenuti soprattutto una forma di violenza corporale, paragonabile alle percosse, all'incatenamento e alla mutilazione e quindi appropriata per i condannati di bassa estrazione sociale, sia schiavi che liberi.

In May 1965 the construction of a private race-track at Casale Pian Roseto, a property belonging to Sig. O. Baldi on the Via di S. Cornelia about 1·5 km. north of the ancient city of Veii, led to the discovery of a remarkable semi-subterranean building of the Etruscan period. The mechanical excavator had removed the south-east corner of this building exposing its massive filling of building blocks, tiles and broken pottery. The Superintendent of Antiquities, Doctor Mario Moretti, on being informed of the discovery by the local custodians, ordered the suspension of the work in the area concerned and entrusted me with this interesting problem. For this I wish to express once more my warmest thanks to Doctor Moretti. The material was recovered, under the direct supervision of the Assistente of the Superintendency, Sign. A. D'Amico, and myself, by the volunteer labour of the young members of the Gruppo Archeologico Romano, to whose enthusiasm and hard work I am deeply indebted. In addition the Director of the British School at Rome, Mr. J. B. Ward-Perkins put at my disposal the technical assistance of Mrs. L. Murray Threipland, helped by Miss Mary Ann Meagher and Miss Thora Fisker, who collaborated in the work of excavation and prepared the sections. To all these I wish to express my indebtedness.

The importance of the Roman army in the social history of the Empire needs no stressing. The financial and, therefore, the social position of the soldier cannot be assessed without an estimate of the pay that he received during service and of the lumpsums or grants of land that he secured on retirement. The conclusions of A. von Domaszewski on this question have hitherto been generally accepted; but, as they have recently been sharply challenged and certainly rest too frequently on ingenious combinations which do not give the certainty claimed for them, it may be convenient to assemble and analyse the evidence once more, even if the conclusions suggested prove to agree in the main with those of Domaszewski. I shall seek to distinguish certainty from probability, and both from mere conjecture.

Begun in 2009, the Roman Peasant Project was designed to excavate the smallest sites found in field survey and to analyse the diet, economies, land use and landscapes of the Roman peasant. The Project's excavations at the site of Pievina are presented here, and suggest a more complex image of Roman peasant life in the late Republic and late antiquity than current assumptions would anticipate, including surplus production, a high degree of monetization and ties to urban markets.