A long walk in the Italian countryside: Large-scale geophysical survey within the emptyscapes initiative: Examples from the Grosseto-Roselle valley, South Tuscany, Italy

Abstract

In Italy, the potential of geophysical prospection for the characterization of archaeological landscapes, especially in previously unexplored rural or formerly urban areas, has rarely been acknowledged or seriously tested in the field, leaving the character and density of rural settlement across time virtually unknown outside areas favourable to aerial survey. It is obvious, however, that the open countryside must conceal a wide variety of archaeological information, difficult to detect and analyse within an Italian research framework largely dominated in the past by field-walking survey and artefact collection. In response, this article presents some initial results and practical lessons from a programme of large-scale magnetic survey aimed at the initial exploration of the lowland landscape of the Grosseto-Roselle valley, a few kilometres inland from the Adriatic coast, in south-western Tuscany. It is hoped that the results briefly illustrated here will encourage others to undertake similar work elsewhere in Italy and around the Mediterranean as part of a move away from an essentially ‘site-based’ approach towards a truly ‘landscape’ perspective.