This volume gathers a series of selected contributions about settlement patterns in the Italian countryside between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. It provides a critical overview of the most recent research carried out on late antique and early medieval Italy (Friuli Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Apulia and Calabria) and uses innovative interpretative frameworks to gain a better understanding of rural settlement dynamics.

Author Biography

ANGELO CASTRORAO BARBA (Palermo, 1983) is currently a Fellow at the University of Palermo (Sicily, Italy). His principal fields of interest are Late Antique and Early Medieval Archaeology and the transformations of landscape and settlement patterns from Roman times to the Middle Ages in the Mediterranean area. In 2013, he obtained a PhD in Medieval Archaeology (University of Siena) with a dissertation about the end of Roman villas in Italy between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (AD 200-800). In 2014, he received a post-graduate Masters Diploma in GIS & Remote Sensing (Centre for Geo Technologies / Siena). In 2014-2015 he was a guest researcher at VU University Amsterdam and a postdoctoral fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR). In summer 2018 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the DFG Center for Advanced Studies `Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages' of the University of Tu bingen. For the period 2018/2020 he is a postdoctoral scholar in the Getty-sponsored workshop series `Mediterranean Palimpsests: Connecting the Art and Architectural Histories of Medieval & Early Modern Cities'. Currently (2016-2018), he is a research fellow on the project `Harvesting Memories' (University of Palermo / Soprintendenza BB.CC.AA. of Palermo) which aims to study the ecology and archaeology of rural landscapes in the Sicani Mountains (C-W Sicily).