A method for modeling dispersed settlements: visualizing an early Roman colonial landscape as expected by conventional theory

Abstract

This paper proposes a GIS quantitative method for simulating dispersed distribution of sites in a landscape. A certain number of sites might have escaped archaeological detection due to the adverse surface visibility conditions experienced during field survey (the so-called missing sites). As regards early Roman colonial landscapes of central-southern Italy, these surface visibility factors were traditionally seen to be so dramatic as to have allegedly hampered the detection of the conventionally expected dispersed and densely-settled colonial farm landscape. In this paper the regional and site-oriented field survey conducted in Venosa (Basilicata, Italy) is used as a case-study to simulate a large amount of hypothetical early colonial sites. The aim of this theoretical exercise is to show how the rural dispersed settlement pattern expected by the conventional theory could appear on a map, and to visually highlight the divergence between survey data and conventional spatial expectancies.