Laconia Rural Sites Project (36)

Over the past 30 years many hundreds of small rural sites have been identified in Greece (and throughout the Mediterranean) through intensive field survey. Their exact nature and function is still a matter of hot contention. This volume reviews the current theories on the variety and character of rural sites, land tenure and residence in Prehistoric, Classical, Roman and Byzantine Greece. The innovative methodology adopted for this project is outlined against the background of intensive site survey, the impact of post-depositional effects, geophysical prospection in the Mediterranean and archaeological soils analysis. The core of the volume is an analysis of 20 sites, which range in date from the Early Bronze Age to Byzantine periods, selected from the >400 located by the Laconia Survey (Supplementary Volume 26-27). The concluding section then reviews the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology applied and draws broader conclusions about rural settlement, land use and site function from the prehistoric period onwards.

...a volume as innovative in its (re)iterative research and methodology as it is novel in its documentation of select rural sites [...] the work justly deserves the consideration of economic historians, landscape/regional specialists, and archaeologists at large. (Christopher L. Witmore The Medieval Review)