I luoghi di sosta: funzioni, spazi, contesti

Abstract

Late antique itineraries and juridical sources show that both the Roman road system and the related post stations network were still active in Late Antiquity. Roads and stations were primarily used by public officers travelling under the aegis of the cursus publicus, but literary sources confirm that they were also used by private people, travelling for different purposes. Many different words (mansio, stathmos, statio, mutatio, deversorium, praetorium, etc.) indicate the places used by travellers for resting and, if the case, for changing horses, pack- and draught-animals. Unfortunately, this relative abundance of written sources is not paralleled by a similar amount of archaeological data, since the archaeological research agenda had only just recently focused on "minor" settlements located along the roads. While many smaller or larger archaeological sites located along the roads have been tentatively recognised as places associated with post station functions, mainly on the basis of their toponymy, we still lack a proper research framework to archaeologically identify such a function. A more or less close relationship with a road pathway, the presence of a large paved courtyard surrounded by stables and warehouses, the existence of a baths building or a larger, isolated, thermal complex seem to be assumed as possible archaeological indicators of a site that performed the function of resting place, may be in association with other functions as well. Despite of the difficulty in precisely identifying the place and the typology of any single part of the system, the road stations network provides on the whole a very interesting study case for an experiment of contextual archaeology, intended to evaluate the role that those settlements had within the scenery presented by the overall transformation of landscapes and the settlement patterns in Late Antiquity. [Author]