ABSTRACT
The present contribution discusses archaeological surveys, drawing attention to the wide gap between the development and implementation or archaeological research within townscapes as compared with rural landscapes in the Mediterranean area. The first part of the discussion summarises the development of landscape studies and survey methods during the last century, critically highlighting the outcomes and limitations of past experience. The paper then presents some results of the Emptyscapes project, an interdisciplinary programme of survey and interpretation work designed to stimulate changes in the way in which archaeologists, in Italy but also more generally within the Mediterranean world, study the archaeology of the urban and rural countryside, moving from an essentially site-based approach to a truly landscape-scale perspective. The first results of the project have made it possible to challenge past landscape and theoretical paradigms moving towards a more complex and comprehensive understanding blurring borders between urban and rural environments. In doing so the project has also emphasised the extent to which choices about the methodological and technological framework of the work may to a certain extent predetermine the archaeological results and influence the archaeological questions that can be asked or answered.
