The limits of this territory can be made to coincide, approximately, with those of the current province of Barcelona. It has promoted research and study of the ancient landscape, exploring archaeological finds of rural structures, roads and landscapes in general, with the aim of defining the Roman cultural landscape. Of particular interest for the investigation of the landscape of this territory are the analysis of the known cultivated soils, the layout of the Roman roads, and the various archaeological finds with landscape references.
The discoveries made, and yet to be made, in this area should lead us to reconsider and address the models of occupation and territorial organisation of the region. In doing so, we seek to delve into the evolution and change of the models for structuring the Roman territory as the Empire developed and moved towards late antiquity, always contrasting the discoveries made with the surveyor’s sources. In the case of the vicinity of Barcino, the studies carried out refer mainly to the documentation of the ager through epigraphic, toponymic and archaeological sources.
Concrete actions
Most of the research that we have carried out, and which we wish to investigate in greater depth in the coming years, deals with wine production in the laietanian area. We have documented a significant increase in wine and pottery production in workshops starting in the middle of the 1st century BC. This growth is exceptional insofar as it is not due to the development and extension of the villa as an entity of territorial domain, but the other way round: the impulse of the wine activity came from the Romanised local population and the action of Italic merchants, an impulse that would later lead to the consolidation of the model of fundus organised from the villa.
These discoveries allow us to reconsider the Roman territorial structuring, insofar as it was based on a rural property not immediately linked to the centuriation system implemented after the foundation of new cities (Barcino and Iluro in this case), but to a confluence of this system with that of the ager arcifiniusi.e. the one that respected the natural or previous – indigenous – territorial divisions. This interaction is recorded in two documents: a boundary between properties marked by an amphora, and a terminus augustalis found in Montornés.
These findings document the importance of archaeological surveys for the knowledge of the Roman cultural landscape, which, together with epigraphic studies – especially of statue bases and territorial markers – make it possible to reconstruct with certainty the layout of the Roman cultural landscape. It is therefore the aim of our project to deepen and extend our work in these areas, developing a greater number of archaeological surveys that will allow us to find finds such as wine production stamps and amphorae marks. By means of these, we can reconstruct the social relations whose projection on the territory came to configure the Roman territorial structuring in the territory of Laietània.