Provincia Lucania: topography and land survey in a changing landscape, from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (part 1)

Provincia Lucania is the name used by sources in Late Antiquity to define the part of ancient regio III which the Diocletianic reforms included as one of the most productive regions of suburbicarian Italy. The heterogeneity of the studies carried out in the past and the treatment of archaeological and philological data together with statistical examples, even extended to non investigated parts, underestimate the exact content of textual, epigraphic and mapping sources about this land as well as the connections which existed between distant but culturally very close localities. The topographic analysis of the provincia also take place together with the surveyors’ texts, in such a way that the evolution of the landscape from the 5^th to the 11^th centuries emerges by comparing and relating the latter to the reality. The different versions of Tabula Peutingeriana, the itineraria and the so-called Liber Coloniarum or Regionum are here decoded and open up new perspectives to analyze a still largely unknown territory.