throughout the countryside
to connect the region with the Via Aurelia and Clodia (See Figure 18).295 In much the same way that the major consular roads had transformed the landscapeof the former territory of Veii, that of Cerveteri was also now drawn to the newly formalized lines of communication. The landscape saw a great variety of site types during the period, from the massive villas of the wealthy to innumerable small farms and a pair of villages located at Aquae Caeretanae and at Ad Turres.296 Both sites were functioning as hubs in the
landscape for collecting and distributing the agricultural surplus. Recent excavations at Aquae Caeretanae have revealed that the site consisted of a cluster of a number of wealthy villas and their dependent farmsteads, suggesting that villas and villages were not exclusive categories.297 At the same time, the praefectura of Forum Clodii continued to flourish as the
major interior center within Caeretian territory.298 Likewise, a new community created in
the area to the North of Castrum Novum at Aquae Tauri became a major node of agricultural exploitation.299 There was a re-foundation of Castrum Novum under the triumvirs or
during the Augustan period.300 In the last decades of the 1st century B.C., perhaps because
of the re-foundation of the colony, the number of luxury coastal villas in the region soared. The colony itself was enhanced during the 1st century A.D. with the construction of an
aqueduct. Throughout the Late Republic and Early Imperial Periods, the trend was toward the expansion of sites identified with the new Roman colonies and foundations linked into the Roman road network. These sites began to assume the importance of the old urban and quasi-urban communities of the Etruscan landscape. Cerveteri was in decline by the 1st
century B.C., and to the same period can be dated the abandonment of Monterano, which
295Enei 1992, 80. 296Enei 1992, 80. 297Cosentino 1990. 298Gazzetti 1990, 103. 299Gazzetti 1990, 103. 300Gianfrotta 1972, 19-21.
had played a major role in controlling the use of the interior of Cerveteri’s territory. Forum Clodii clearly replaced the latter community.301 Notwithstanding the boom in rural
settlement within the territory of Cerveteri, it is important to note that the urban community itself was undergoing a program of revitalization under the policies of Augustus. Unfortunately, this program was to fail and Cerveteri to become a backwater within the Imperial scheme of Etruria.
Despite the growth of a number of villas, Enei’s campaigns of survey have determined that just fewer than 10% of the sites present in the Early Imperial Period had a life span of almost a millennium, showing an incredible degree of continuity.302 Along these
lines, smaller isolated farmsteads continued to dominate in absolute numbers in this area, however, with an almost even scattering across the landscape.303 Enei suggests that these
smaller residences were subsidiary structures contained within the jurisdiction of the larger villa centers of the region.304 In fact, each villa structure appears to have had two or three of
these smaller structures in its immediate vicinity.305 This suggests that free labor, perhaps
provided by tenants of small plots of land, was here too an important part of the regime of agricultural exploitation. During the Late Republican and Early Imperial Periods, the landscape of Cerveteri was turned into one in which great portions of the land were exploited by large landowners even in some cases in blocks of territory that can be justifiably called latifundia. Such a mode of exploitation makes sense given the proximity of
301Gazzetti 1990, 103. 302Enei 1995, 75.
303Merlino and Mirenda 1990, 56; Enei 1992, 81. 304Enei 1992, 81.
the Ager Caeretanus to Rome, and thus the increased desirability of the land.306 Yet, even this
intense cash crop economy was dependent upon many of the pre-Roman elements of the landscape.
This analysis fails to account for those settlements not located in close proximity to villas. The more marginal zones of the interior, associated with these smaller settlements appear to have been dedicated to stock raising, although it is also a possibility that grain production along the organization of the coastal region of the Chiarone and Tafone basin in the Ager Vulcentis may have provided a viable alternative means of life.307 Even at its height
of density, it is important to note that large portions of the landscape remained uncultivated. Such areas included the roughest of the mountainous territory, as well as the coastal swamp between Palidoro and Ladispoli.308 In the immediate hinterland of Cerveteri,
this picture of a flourishing rural landscape would continue throughout the 1st and 2nd
centuries A.D. in contrast to the Ager Vulcentis,where already by the Flavian period signs of a crisis in rural ownership were present.309 The territory of Tolfa, on the border with
Tarquinia, shows a high degree of transition during this period, with a number of sites falling into disuse while a number of new ones were born. The majority of sites falling into disuse are those located in the valley bottoms, while the growth within the region appears to have occurred on the hill-slopes and plateaus in a development contrary to what is expected for a “Roman” landscape.310
306Similar patterns can be found in the Ager Veientanus. Cp. Cambi 2004, 89-93. 307Enei 1995, 75; cf. Carandini and Cambi 2002, 192.
308Enei 1995, 76.
309Enei 1992, 82; Enei 1995, 76. cf. Attolini et al. 1991; Attolini et al. 1982, 371; and Celuzza and Regoli 1982, 45-46. 310Gazzetti and Stanco 1990, 108.
Roman Tarquinia