Conversano e il territorio a Sud-Est di Bari tra tardoantico e altomedioevo. Visibilità e invisibilità dei dati archeologici e delle fonti.

Although landscape archaeology research indicates significant improvements in the knowledge of rural settlement patterns from the Roman and Late Antiquity periods in the central part of Puglia, the territory of Conversano, despite the absence of systematic archaeological surveys, offers the possibility of investigating and recognizing some long-term trend lines that seem to characterize rural settlements between the 7th and 12th centuries. The territory is characterized, at least since the Middle Ages, by a relatively large extension of documentary sources from which a rich and articulated network of rural settlements emerges, never investigated in a systematic way before. The contribution, therefore, is divided into two integrated and complementary analytical levels: the identification of known archaeological contexts and the topographic contextualization of documents in relation to toponymy and historical cartography, supported by the implementation of data in a GIS platform. The study has allowed us to identify a close connection between Roman and medieval settlements, which were very well integrated into a complex environmental framework, characterised by a fair amount of economic vitality, which allowed the area to become part of the Mediterranean trade routes first, and then regional ones, embedding itself into long-term commercial traffic which seems to favour this area.