Orientations of Roman centuriations in Italy. Preliminary results

The centuriations were public lands delimited and divided in regular lots (centuriae) by a procedure called limitatio that was applied by the Roman state as a result of the conquest of a new territory.

Despite previous works refused the astronomical hypothesis for the orientation of Roman centuriations, recent publications supported the presence of astronomical patterns in the design of the Roman rural landscape and urbanism in Italy. In this work, we present a project for the statistical study of the orientation of Roman centuriations and the preliminary results extracted from more than 50 sites in Italy. By this, we want to see if astronomy was the main target in the transformation of space. In short, we attempt to verify whether ancient surveyors followed purely practical guidelines to layout the territory or if symbolic precepts were also present in those vast programs of land reorganization.

Roman centuriations. Roman urbanism. Roman landscape.