| dc.description.abstract | This research project has as its subject matter the urban and rural settlements of central Apulia
between the 10th and the 12th century, through the analysis of the archival sources and the
archaeological data. The historical period and the area under analysis have never been subject
to systematic research, meaning that the study required a complete cataloguing of the
archaeological settlements identified within the urban and rural areas and known from
published works as well as from historical and documentary sources. The research was
conducted through the analysis of the different components of the territory: the landscape, the
infrastructures, the urban and rural settlement system, the land management methods, the
monastic and ecclesiastical network. The survey has its focal point in the systematic census of
all the contexts and archaeological evidence, merged into two catalogs: a "Catalog of
settlements" and a "Catalog of religious buildings", which respectively host 94 and 158 files,
which provide functional data for cartographic referencing, indications on the
geomorphological and topographical framework, chronological elements, indications on the
bibliography and on the archive documentation. Therefore it was possible to relate the
individual cases in an overall synthesis, to reconstruct the settlement network attested in the
area and to formulate new hypotheses about the close correlation between sites and particular
features of the landscape: the so-called lame, wetlands, karst lakes, as well as the connection
with the available natural resources, outlining an overall settlement framework of the southern
sector of central Apulia, with attention to the persistence and discontinuity factors in the
articulated story of this land in the Middle Ages. [edited by Author] | it_IT |
