Introduction

The characteristics of the Roman period settlement in the hinterland of certain parts of the former province of Noricum are hardly known, for various reasons. Above all, this becomes clear in comparison with other areas of the Roman Empire, such as the provinces of Raetia or Britannia. From this situation grew the idea to continue the research of rural settlement activities in the northern area of the former Roman province of Noricum in a selected area of investigation by the dissertation project "Archaeological Investigations of Roman Settlement in the Hinterland of Northern Noricum" (RRLN).

Goal

The PhD project deals with archaeological settlement activities in a precisely defined study area in the northern (today's Lower Austrian) hinterland of the former Roman province of Noricum.

Description

From 15 BC to 488 AD Noricum formed part of the Roman Empire. While particular regions of this province (e.g. the limes zone) have been in the focus of archaeological research for decades, in-depth analyses of other areas (e.g. the rural hinterland) remain absent often. This state of research applies especially to the section of the former ancient Roman Province in what is now the federal state of Lower Austria.

To improve the relatively poor state of research, the archaeological settlement activities in the hinterland of the limes zone and of the ancient Roman municipium of Aelium Cetium/St. Pölten in Northern Noricum are investigated and re-evaluated by Dominik Hagmann in course of his PhD project 'Roman Rural Landscapes in Noricum: Archaeological Studies on Roman Settlements in the Hinterland of Northern Noricum' in a well-defined study area.

The project is meant to be a critical study in landscape archaeology and aims to shed new light on rural settlements in the study area that have so far been neglected in archaeological research for various reasons.

The project pursues an inclusive approach: all available archaeological sources should be taken into account within the 'area of interest' (AOI). A further 'area of special interest' (AOSI) is defined within the AOI and is used for studies in settlement archaeology at two exemplary sites (villae rusticae of Oberndorf a. D. Melk in the Melk-valley and Petzenkirchen in the Erlauf-valley). While open geodata is used to analyze the environment mainly, unstructured and heterogeneous archaeological data sets of varying extent are the project's core.

While the project's temporal focus lies on the periods of Roman antiquity also precedent and subsequent periods like the late Latène period (La-Tène D, approx. 150 BC to 15 BC) and the early Middle Ages (post 488 AD) should be taken into account in order to evaluate the spatial, temporal, and material transformation of the AOI.

Methods

Archaeology, Spatial Analysis, Archaeological Excavation, Roman Archaeology, Computational Archaeology, Geophysical Survey, Landscape Archaeology, Geographic Database, Geographical Information System