"Drawing upon new archaeological data from excavations in the territory of Alberese (GR – Italy), the proposed project will enhance our understanding of the Roman period (2nd century BC – 6th century AD) in South Etruria by focussing on 4 key issues:• What was the impact of the Roman conquest of the region?• What kind of economic infrastructure came into being – in particular, the relationship between cities and the rural settlements in their territories, and the distributive systems including cabotage ports and harbours?• How did economic patterns change after the 2nd century AD economic crisis?• How did the economic and social system change at the fall of the Roman Empire, and what was the impact of these changes on the urban, rural and maritime settlements?Adopting a multi-scalar approach, and using the most modern scientific and analytical techniques, we will investigate and compare the data from the Alberese excavations (the ‘local’) with two other Italian sub-regions. The first is the ager Cosanus where data is available for the colony of Cosa, the Roman villa of Settefinestre, some maritime villas, cabotage ports and a mansio over the river Osa. The second sub-region is the Tiber valley, where the results of the outstanding Tiber Valley Project (which embraces research on both Roman urban and rural settlement) have been recently published. These three Tyrrhenian territories will then be compared with the trends revealed by recent archaeological research at the Adriatic seaport and city of Butrint (Albania) - in order to provide a Mediterranean perspective on socio-economic and settlement change."