Our impression of Roman history is dominated by the rich: their great houses and temples, their literature and philosophy. Yet 90% of the Roman population were poor, rural farmers: how would our idea of the ancient Roman world be different if we considered the lives of this silent, poor majority?

"The Archaeology of Rural Rome" was the first project of its kind, designed explicitly to understand the lived experience of the rural poor - that is, Roman peasants. It looked at every facet of peasant life - from architecture and diet to agriculture and trade. Its findings transform dramatically the scholarly assumption of a poor whose ignorance and isolation lead to frequent famine, primitive economic habits, and an overall low quality of life.

Instead, this project provided the seeds for a quite different view - a knowledgeable, socially and physically mobile group of rural farmers who while they lived in modest houses and often suffered from want, nonetheless had access to both information and markets that could have allowed them to escape a grinding cycle of poverty.

Based in southern Tuscany, Italy, the project excavated 10 sites associated with peasants, and analyzed the botanical and animal remains, ceramics, coins and other materials they left behind. We also studied in detail their landscape - the land and its capacities.

At every turn, we found ample evidence for a sophisticated rural world intimately tied to the Roman global economy. We found evidence for a sophisticated form of crop rotation, for the daily use of coins as a means of exchange, of a diet with an important component of much-needed protein, and of an exacting and efficient use of the land to maximize agricultural surplus. Many of the buildings we excavated were not, as we expected, modest houses, but short-lived, specialized structures for agricultural use - huts, stalls, presses and kilns, attesting to intensive and precise land use. We documented a rural ceramic factory which sold its wares not only to the wealthy in cities, but the local rural peasantry who also probably helped form its workforce. And every site produced evidence of imported goods, even imported foodstuff like wine, which could have also been produced locally.

The project also suggested that not were Roman population levels lower than some have suggested, but even the population peak of the late 1st century BC-AD was short lived. The rural world we documented was anything but static, with houses and other structures in use for very short periods before their occupants picked up and moved elsewhere. The moment of particularly intense land use we documented was itself confined to the period of the late Republic -  2nd c. BC. through the early 1st c. AD. This period, one of political upheaval, civil war and foreign conquest, thus also witnessed some of the most expansive and sophisticated use of the Italian countryside prior to the modern period. 

The project was a testament to the ability of modern scientific techniques to give voice to a people without history. It also provided suggestive parallels for modern populations likewise wrestling with rural poverty in an increasingly urbanized, global economy. The sophisticated and efficient use of agricultural land, engagement with markets and physical mobility that characterized the Roman rural poor seemed to have yielded a two-century long period of rural prosperity and social mobility.

Last Modified: 09/30/2015
Modified by: Kimberly Bowes