The Vienna Orme and Pesa Valley Project (VOPP) focused on the investigation of land-use and human activities in a well-defined micro-region in Inland Northern Etruria by applying a multi-stage and multi-scalar fieldwork scheme. More specifically, VOPP researched thefollowing topics:

• The – changing or unchanged – nature of rural land use
• The relationship between the Roman town of Empoli and the valleys of Pesa and Orme
• Differing patterns of use of material culture
• Issues of site definition and site classification, especially villas

Anchoring point of the project was the site of Molino San Vincenzo which was investigated bya broad array of different methodological approaches like repeated on site-surveys, shoveltests, geophysical prospection, phosphate analysis, palynological and zooarchaeologicalresearch as well as excavation and analyses of the material culture found. That interdisciplinary approach allowed entirely new insights in the living and working environment of a farmstead in Roman Tuscany from Middle Republican till Late Antique times (3 cent. BCE – 5 cent CE). Concerning methodology VOPP clearly revealed the difficulties to exactlycategorize sites and to ascribe them to hierarchically ordered types like villa, villa rustica andfarmstead.Archaeobotanical studies in Molino San Vincenzo revealed that cereal cultivation took placein the surrounding of the site but also that the environment was characterized bypasturelands. That outcome hints at the existence of a highly developed ley farming systemalready in Roman times. In consequence we have to rethink our familiar conceptions onRoman agriculture. That new picture of Roman land-use is corroborated by the results ofzooarchaeological analyses and off-side surveys.Material culture analysis proved that Molino San Vincenzo stood in strict contrast to the city of Empoli: Although the rural site was part of the empire-wide trade and intensive exportactivities of agricultural produce are attested, import rates of pottery were low and restrictedto regionally produced vessels. Neighboring rural sites, however, show very differentassemblages. Thus it is not sufficient to establish a simplistic dichotomy between urban andrural but a finer grained differentiation is necessary. Evidently centuriatio played a decisiverole as a comparison between the sites Molino San Vincenzo and Cotone revealed.The combination of on-site surveys, analyses of material culture and geophysics showed that the Val di Pesa and Val Orme should not be conceptualized as villa landscape with thesehigh status sites as the main determining factor. Even a reduction of land-use to agriculturalproduction only is too narrow-sighted: The study area of VOPP was dotted by sites withvarious functions from pottery kilns, small repositories for agricultural produce to roadstations and large farmsteads. So the multi-methodological approach of VOPP provided fundamental insights in the functional variability of the sites and will help to discuss problemsof site classification on a methodologically more secure basis. Therefore the outcome of VOPP is relevant not only for Northern Tuscany in Roman times but for landscapearchaeological research at all.