Essays on the physical development of Rome: changing ground levels, urban stratigraphy, ancient infrastructure, funerary landscapes and the archaeological evidence preserved within the contemporary city.
Rome has repeatedly altered its own physical environment. Buildings were constructed and dismantled. Streets were resurfaced. Valleys accumulated deposits. Earlier structures were incorporated into later architecture, while other spaces were filled, abandoned or reused.
Field Notes examines those processes rather than individual monuments alone: changing ground levels, archaeological depth, ancient infrastructure, funerary geography, reuse and the relationship between archaeological evidence and the city that developed around it.
The result is an evolving journal for understanding the physical development of Rome.
Urban Stratigraphy · Rome
Ancient Rome was not buried in a single event. Rebuilding, collapse, infill, resurfacing, alluvial deposits and reuse gradually changed the relationship between earlier structures and later phases of the city.
Each essay approaches the archaeological city from a different angle: depth, structures, water engineering, stratigraphic method, infrastructure, architectural transformation, funerary geography and the coexistence of ancient remains with contemporary Rome.
There is no universal depth for ancient Rome. Archaeological elevations vary according to topography, accumulation and the development of each part of the city.
Earlier streets, buildings, hydraulic structures, quarries, hypogea and modern infrastructure occupy different parts of Rome's subsurface.
Aqueducts formed part of a much larger hydraulic network of channels, distribution structures, cisterns, drains and engineered gradients.
Deposits, cuts, walls, floors, fills and construction phases acquire meaning through their relationships. Stratigraphy allows those sequences to be reconstructed.
Constructing new infrastructure in Rome means working through ground already occupied by earlier phases of the city.
Many structures now reached below street level were not designed as subterranean spaces. Infill, collapse, reuse, resurfacing and later construction changed their position within the city.
Roads leaving ancient Rome were also landscapes of memory. Tombs and necropolises developed along routes later absorbed into the expanding modern city.
Ancient structures in Rome can survive inside palaces, commercial properties and other spaces still belonging to the contemporary city.
Field Notes is organised around questions and processes, not around a catalogue of monuments. New essays are added when they introduce another useful way of interpreting Rome's archaeological fabric.
Field Notes builds a framework for reading Rome as a changing physical environment: from ground levels and infrastructure to funerary geography, architectural reuse and the preservation of archaeology within the contemporary city.
Individual archaeological sites belong primarily to the Places atlas. Field Notes connects them through broader processes and relationships that can be observed across Rome.
From Process to Place
Field Notes examines the processes and relationships that shaped Rome. Places documents the individual archaeological sites in which that evidence can still be examined.
Explore domestic spaces, sanctuaries, funerary landscapes, hydraulic structures, former ground levels and archaeological remains incorporated into the contemporary city.
If a Field Note has led you to a particular period, archaeological question or type of evidence, it can become the starting point for a private journey in Rome.
Tell us your dates, interests and party size. We can identify a historically coherent route using archaeological places that can genuinely be accessed during your stay.
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