L'archeologia delle ville tardoantiche in Italia tra bilanci e nuove prospettive

In the last decades a new series of studies and excavations has greatly enriched the knowledge of late antique Roman villas. The interpretations previously proposed on functions, meaning and history of this category of buildings are profoundly changed. In particular, in the most recent research, much attention is paid to the study of the last phases of the villas as residential buildings and to their transformations, reuse and abandonment during the centuries of the Early Middle Ages. This paper offers a historiographical synthesis of the main research published in the last twenty years and an update review on the main archaeological investigations in Italy, in order to provide a reference framework for the case studies concerning the villas in Central and Northern Italy analysed in the volume.