Planting the seed of Rome

Abstract.

The paper summarises some of the results of a long term project carried out by the author on charred macroremains from several key sequences in Rome and its broader hinterland dating from between the 9th and the 6th cent. B.C. This is the period that witnesses major changes in the structure of the settlement, in its social complexity and in its economic processes leading to formation of the state and urbanisation. Building upon recent work analysing the relationship between the emergence of social complexity and crop processing (as seen through the macroremains), possible evidence for structural changes in Roman archaic society are investigated, with particular attention to issues such as the centralisation of food storage and processing or the organisation of redistribution. Studies of this kind may well offer a different perspective on the beginnings of Rome, counterbalancing the traditional emphasis on textual evidence and burial analysis.