Genesis, transformation, and crisis of rural landscapes in Hispania Citerior (1st century BC 5th century AD). From civitas sine urbe to municipium.

The project will analyze the Roman urbanization process in several selected areas of Hispania Citerior from the perspective of its impact on rural areas, with special attention to secondary centers, either those that became municipalities after a long period of urbanization or those whose urban centers never became consolidated (civitates sine urbe). This diversity of urban realities did not prevent the development of productive forms that were fully integrated into Roman economic patterns, sometimes with complementary agricultural, livestock, or mining strategies. We will study these productive forms using the methodology of landscape archaeology and, in particular, geoarchaeology. The project will also analyze the crisis of these centers and their respective rural territories, especially when, from the middle of the 3rd century onwards, the imperial political and administrative institutions underwent serious changes, and these secondary cities had to face new productive, social, and environmental challenges. In previous projects, we studied some territories of Roman Hispania that reveal models of colonial and municipal urbanization, but now we will focus our attention on various test territories in northeastern Hispania Citerior (located in very diverse cultural and environmental contexts), characterized by an unconventional Roman urbanization model, and which in that in some cases they were subject to the influence of powerful nearby civitates with colonial status, such as Tarraco (Tarragona) or Barcino (Barcelona). This phenomenon will be studied both from the point of view of historical and epigraphic sources and from the point of view of landscape archaeology, through the identification of settlement patterns, land occupation, and key sites. We aim to characterize the productive landscapes linked to this type of secondary city, analyzing the forms of organization, management, and exploitation of agricultural and livestock spaces by combining geographical (GIS, spatial analysis), archaeological (prospecting, excavation), and geoarchaeological (exposed profile sampling or column drilling) indicators. The project, which includes a specialist in geoarchaeology as a research member, aims to further develop the use of this methodologyassociated with other paleoenvironmental evidenceto identify these processes, documented diachronically in the edaphic record, and to promote their historical interpretation. The results will advance our understanding of these territories and evaluate the significance of the unconventional urban model that Rome implemented there, a diverse and complementary model that allowed the effective management and exploitation of these territories and reveals the Romans' ability to adapt to the particularities of each region and its inhabitants. In addition to advancing our understanding of ancient Hispanic landscapes, the project also aims to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge about test territories, as well as their protection and heritage enhancement for the enjoyment of local communities and institutions. Strategies will therefore be proposed to promote the development of cultural landscapes as a heritage, historical, and tourist resource, contributing to territorial structuring, population retention, and social cohesion.