Craft production and trade in the central Italian countryside: approaches and first results of the Minor Centers Project

Abstract

In Roman Italy, small rural centers (villages, fora, stationes, and sanctuaries) are likely to have been important reference points for the rural population. Archaeologically, such minor centers are not well-known: few are excavated, and in field surveys they are rarely recognized or discussed in detail. The five-year project ‘Fora, stationes and sanctuaries, the role of minor centers in the economy of Roman central Italy’, funded by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), is based at the Groningen Institute of Archaeology of the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). It explicitly addresses the issues highlighted above: it aims to understand the role of minor centers in th..