Villa rustica

By the terms villa rustica or by the expression leave rustica one indicates the part of a Roman villa which was devoted to the agricultural work by contrast with the villa urbana or leave urbana which was intended to accommodate the owner and could be sumptuously arranged. This type of farm appeared in Italy in the last centuries of the Roman République then was diffused in all the Roman Empire.

Structure

The architecture of the villae rusticae is much less known than that of the residential parts, leave urbana : on the one hand a long time the agricultural part was neglected by the excavations more anxious to find beautiful objects than the trace of a commonplace daily newspaper, and on the other hand the buildings which compose it are sometimes less better preserved or less easily identifiable.

The composition of the villa rustica is also variable. It depends partly on the type of practiced cultures: presses (for oil and the wine), storerooms, attics, cattle sheds, stables, birdcages, repair shops, workshops of ceramics (amphoras and tiles), housing of the slaves are some of the buildings which one can expect to find. The Pressoir S are rather often preserved partly and easily identifiable because of the two large stones which supported the axis of the press, called the binoculars, and which often remained places from there because of their size. They thus make it possible to identify many oil mills in Roman Africa. The meticulous excavation of a leave rustica can thus bring considerable data on the Roman agricultural economics: thus the excavation of the slave villa of Settefinestre, towards Cosa in Étrurie remains like a model and a reference.

Uses

The hosts (Dominus) of these villae rusticae are often of rich person owners who entrust of it the administration and the good performance with an intendant ( vilicus ) which is one of their freed or a slave. In the provinces, the villae which are around the colonies belong to notable of the city, sometimes of the veterans, sometimes of the notable romanized buildings. Richest, the such Senator S and other political high-ranking persons, as the members of the equestrian Ordre had many villae rusticae , since their social position depended lastly on their Cens, i.e. of their real estate. Concerned of the development of their ground, they were not attached to a sumptuous lifestyle and used of it their villa like large country houses, often luxuriously equipped and being used for the stay with summer: it is about the leave urbana. Taking into account the lifestyle of these large characters, and number of villa which they had the leave urbana was not very often occupied in many villae, it testified however, vis-a-vis leave rustica the power of the Master and his always possible arrival.

Added to the archaeological discoveries, the texts of Latin agronomists, like Caton Old the, Varron, Columelle or Palladius enable us to imagine the operation of the leave rustica ; they can sometimes be supplemented by other documents, like mosaics detailing the agricultural work.

At the end of the republican time, the villa rustica based on an intensive and reflected exploitation servile work were capable of a strong productivity and were devoted to speculative cultures (vines, olive-trees) on average surfaces. They should be distinguished in this respect Latifundium, very large farm, and to understand that none of these forms of farm represented the whole of the exploitations, would be this only because of the geographical diversity of the Roman Italy. The villae rusticae needed also seasonal labor which could provide of the close individual exploitations (small holders). If the evolution of the Roman economy, and the Roman slave system, remains an object of debate in the historians, it seems that the purely slave system was seriously competed with by the setting with farm (allotment of colonists), system practiced by Pline the Young person. The provinces undoubtedly knew never such a strong presence of the slave rural villa.

Villae rusticae found

villa rustica of Settefinestre
villa rustica of Bingen
villa rustica of Zimmerhof
villa rustica of Löffelbach
villa rustica of Hechingen-Stein
villa rustica of Eschweiler
Rustica Villa of östlichen Landkreis

See too

Internal bonds

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