This chapter is devoted entirely to the Roman church of Santa Prassede, the principal surviving architectural project of Pope Paschal I (817–824). Its function as a major urban repository for the relics of the city’s Early Christian saints and martyrs, more than 2000 of which were brought here from the extramural catacombs, determines both the architectural model (Saint Peter’s) and many aspects of the decoration in mosaic, mural painting and sculpture. Special attention is devoted to the San Zeno chapel, the burial site of Paschal’s mother, Theodora, whose mosaic programme, including her portrait, is completely preserved and reflects that function. Consideration is given to Richard Krautheimer’s suggestion that this church constitutes evidence for a ‘Carolingian renascence’ of architectural forms associated with the first Christian emperor, Constantine.

This chapter establishes the political and cultural context for what follows through an examination of the reign of Pope Leo III (795–816) and his alliance with the Franks, notably Charlemagne, whom he crowned as Roman emperor on 25 December 800. A primary focus is the political and other messages implicit or explicit in the construction and decoration of new reception spaces at the Lateran patriarchate and Saint Peter’s, aimed at reinforcing the new role of the papacy in temporal as well as spiritual matters, and the mosaic decorations for which Leo was responsible in the churches of Santa Susanna and Santi Nereo ed Achilleo. An analysis is provided of the exceptionally detailed list of papal gifts to Roman churches, known as the ‘Donation of 807’, and the chapter concludes with an analysis of the possible sources of papal wealth necessary to make such extravagant largesse possible.

We first summarise the principal findings of the Tuscania Archaeological Survey in terms of the diachronic settlement trends over the past 7500 years that are reconstructed in the previous chapters. The Tuscania story partly mirrors settlement models proposed by other authors for central Italy as a whole and partly diverges from them.In the second section we use a GIS analysis to compare the respective effectiveness of the three landscape sampling strategies we employed. This suggests that all three were equally effective in revealing settlement patterns in the Republican and Early Imperial phases characterized by dispersed and dense rural populations, whereas they revealed contrasting information about the less dense and more variably patterned Etruscan settlement pattern.We review the contribution of the project’s geomorphological studies to the Mediterranean alluviation debate, indicating complex interactions between climate and human actions in landscape formation. The project’s 7500–year ‘archaeological history’ chimes with Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s characterization of Mediterranean landscape history as “continuities of form or pattern, within which all is mutability” (The Corrupting Sea, p. 523).

Though not prolific, our prehistoric material both significantly amplifies our knowledge of the prehistory of the study area and informs on wider debates about settlement trends prior to Etruscan urbanization.Palaeolithic finds were very sparse, but the area was occasionally visited by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in the Early Holocene (9700-6200 BC) even though its volcanic soils were heavily wooded. The first farming communities (Earlier Neolithic, c.5500-4500 BC: 10 sites) consisted of small residential units of one or two households. The Later Neolithic (4500-3500 BC: 15 sites) data fit the regional evidence of increasing complexity and social inequality.Site numbers doubled in the Copper Age (3500-2200 BC: 30 sites) and doubled again in the Earlier Bronze Age (2200-1400 BC: 62 sites) but these societies remained small scale, living as individual households or in small clusters. The same rural structure continued into the Later Bronze Age (1400-950 BC: 53 sites) but above it Tuscania’s Colle San Pietro acropolis developed as a nucleated and probably defended hilltop community.The process of nucleation accelerated in the Iron Age (950-700 BC: 16 sites). Tuscania was probably in a subordinate relationship to Tarquinia, one of five ‘super-centres’ that developed into the major Etruscan cities of South Etruria.

This chapter provides a broader context for the achievement represented by Santa Prassede through an examination of what is known about Paschal’s numerous other building projects and patronage of material culture. Some of these survive (mosaics in the churches of Santa Maria in Domnica and Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, enamel and gilded silver reliquaries in the Sancta Sanctorum) and some are recorded in contemporary and subsequent antiquarian descriptions (funerary chapel in Saint Peter’s, restructuring of the presbytery at Santa Maria Maggiore). All can be related to papal concerns regarding relics, liturgy and the pope’s personal salvation.

The survey indicates marked continuity in rural settlement around Tuscania from Etruscan times into Roman Early Republican period (c.300-170 BC: 212 sites), implying that there was minimal disruption to pre-existing systems of ownership following the subjugation of the area by the Roman army. There was a dramatic expansion in rural settlement, a filling-up of the countryside particularly in formerly under-developed areas away from the town. This growth was encouraged by a better communications network, especially by the upgrading of the Via Clodia.There were increased levels of investment both in the town and in the surrounding countryside. Maximum site numbers developed in the Later Republican period (170-30 BC: 230 sites), and on the evidence of intensive grid collection of surface remains at selected sites, and geophysical survey at others, the core buildings of agrarian units first reached their maximum extent at this time. However, there is little evidence for large slave-run villas producing goods geared primarily for export and displacing the free peasantry, despite the written sources emphasizing this process throughout Italy at this time: the countryside around Tuscania was dominated by small farms and villages, and high-ranking sites did not bring significant changes to long-established farming regimes.

This chapter is devoted to the pontificate of John VIII (872–882) and the significant physical threat to the city of Rome posed principally although not exclusively by Muslim marauders from North Africa, particularly in the aftermath of the death of Emperor Louis II in 875. Papal efforts to find new military champions were largely unsuccessful, although a significant victory was scored by the Byzantine imperial fleet at the mouth of the Tiber in 880. John VIII also constructed fortifications to defend the church and monastery of San Paolo fuori le mura, hoping to present a repeat of the sack of 846. Although the papal court is known to have been a hotbed of intellectual activity, little has survived from this era in the way of material culture except for the conversion of the temple of Portunus into the church of Santa Maria de Secundicerio by a senior lay official, Stephen secundicerius. Surviving fragments of its mural decorations reveal the influence of both apocryphal texts about the life of Mary as well as contemporary Byzantine hagiographic literature. This leads to a discussion of the place of origin of certain contemporaneous Byzantine manuscripts which share the same style as the murals, most notably the Paris Sacra Parallela (BnF gr. 923).

Before our project Etruscan Tuscania was best known for its great family tombs with inscribed sarcophagi of the 4th-2nd centuries BC, but the survey evidence shows that the Etruscan landscape was most densely settled in the 6th century BC (219 sites), coincident with the process of urbanization. The frequency of ‘off-site’ material indicates that Etruscan agricultural activity extended over the greater part of the surveyed area. Little survives of the remains of the Etruscan town, but the richness of Etruscan material immediately south of the city walls indicates a suburban extension of it. The development of Tuscania implies that the control of minor centres by major centres (or rather, the control of less powerful by more powerful families as social and economic inequalities became increasingly marked) was one of the earliest features of Etruscan urbanization. The Archaic Etruscan phase was followed by a marked, though not dramatic, population decline in the Later Etruscan phase (129 sites), the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Activities at Guidocinto, a small but long-lived Etruscan farm we excavated near Tuscania, included the production and processing of oil, wine, and wool, products that enhanced elite lifestyles and provided them with valuable resources for exchange and trade.

The project’s results indicate that a landscape once dominated by small, family-run, farms, each cultivating small plots of land, gradually transformed through the three phases of the Roman imperial period (Early, 30 BC-AD 120: 205 sites; Mid, AD 120-260: 174 sites; Late, AD 260-440: 146 sites) into one featuring large agricultural estates involved in extensive farming practices. In light of historical records it seems likely that affluent investors bought up much of the land of failing smallholders, expanding the capacity of their own agricultural enterprises and leasing out properties to poorer farmers. Local wealth, power, and influence became concentrated in the hands of a limited number of elite landowners. Yet despite this process, small low-status sites remained the most abundant class of rural habitation even in the Late Imperial period and many middle-ranking sites endured without a break in occupation even into Late Antique times (AD 440-700: 77 sites in total). The resilience of wide sections of the rural community, even in the face of external threats from Longobards and others, should not be underestimated, but significantly a considerable proportion of Tuscania’s hinterland of cultivated fields had reverted to scrub and woodland by the Late Antique period.

The primary technique employed in the project was ‘field walking’: systematically collecting archaeological artefacts lying on the ground surface, especially in ploughsoil.The method has been widely employed by archaeologists working around the Mediterranean to map past settlement especially because of the suitability of its semi-arid landscapes for this kind of ground searching.An apparently simple technique, systematic archaeological survey in fact has to deal with a wide range of biasing factors as every stage, so this chapter describes the decisions we took and the methods we employed, and assesses their implications for the quality of the information retrieved: defining the study area (totalling 353 km2);the employment of three sampling methods (Transect, Random and Judgement, totalling 97 km2) to survey the landscape; the decisions we took about the intensity of search and artefact collection methods (41.5 km2 were searched) and about defining ‘sites’- assumed foci of activity -versus ‘off-site’ or sporadic material thought to indicateland use activities such as manuring; and in our subsequent analyses of the materials collected, the methods we used to try to minimize the biasing effects of the surface archaeology of different periods of the past being differentially prolific and/or differentially visible.

The shock occasioned by the Arab sack of Saint Peter’s and San Paolo fuori le mura in August 846 serves as the backdrop for the unprecedented building activities of Pope Leo IV (847–855), best known for his construction of fortifications to enclose the entire area around Saint Peter’s in what subsequently came to be known as the ‘Leonine city’. This was the only extension ever made to Rome’s Aurelian walls of the late third century. Considerable resources were also expended on making good the losses of gold and silver liturgical vessels, silk textiles and other furnishings. New church projects included Santi Quattro Coronati and Santa Maria Nova. Also dating from his reign, and signalling a shift in patronage to become more evident in the years to follow, is a subsidiary chapel in the excavated lower church of San Clemente, which includes the pope’s portrait. Consideration is given to the rationale for the installation of this chapel, possibly with a relic from the site of Christ’s Ascension prominently displayed above its altar.