The Late Antique and medieval landscape to the north-west of Ravenna: the Bassa Romandiola Project

In this paper we will present the preliminary results of the Bassa Romandiola Survey Project, a survey carried out by Bologna University from 2009 in the plain west of Ravenna. In the Late Middle Ages ‘Romandiola’ was the name of a sub-region in which is included the modern province of Ravenna. From a geomorphological point of view, in the past it was an unstable lowland area. In some cases the survey could document the post-Roman and medieval settlement patterns, characterized by an intense increase in the number of sites, in particular from the Carolingian Age, a trend sometimes connected to the nucleation of settlements.