Introduction

The study of the ancient countryside started in the 19^thcentury, when the textes of the Roman land surveyors were published. Researches began on towns’ territories and their limitatio, expanding afterwards to the problems of agrarian structures and of the ways of soil exploitation. As far as Late Antiquity is concerned, the countryside shared the negative image attached to the period, all the more dark this image, that the one of the prievious centuries was idealized. Following some topoi of the written sources, but without any sound argument, the prevalent opinion was that the countryside was exposed to stagnation of the production, depopulation due to epidemics and climatic reverses, and abandonment of settlements. More recently, a more critical appraisal of written sources and the development of archaeological researches have opened new perspectives, taking into account the achievements of historical geography, paleo-climatology, paleo-anthropology. The result is a complex picture, made of lights and shadows, with many regional differences. The two dossiers (2012 and 2013 issues of the Revue) consider some important open questions, through both general / methodological papers and case studies on the Western and Eastern part of the Roman world.