In this article, the authors investigate the effectiveness of glass and metal recycling in Roman towns. The comparison of sealed primary deposits (reflecting what was in use in Roman towns) with dumping sites shows a marked drop in glass and metal finds in the dumps. Although different replacement ratios and fragmentation indices affect the composition of the assemblages recovered in dumps, recycling appears to have played a fundamental role, very effectively reintroducing into the productive chain most glass and metal items before their final discard. After presenting a case study from Pompeii, the authors examine contexts from other sites that suggest that recycling practices were not occasional. In sum, recycling should be considered as an effective and systematic activity that shaped the economy of Roman towns.

Scholars of Roman archaeology, epigraphy, and history are increasingly discussing urban maintenance and waste disposal, but the impact of these phenomena on the archaeological record remains largely understudied. The presence of waste disposal systems in Roman towns entails that a large part of what was discarded was periodically removed from the urban area. This in turn implies that whole historical periods may be underrepresented by the finds recovered within the city. This aspect can be apprehended through the post-excavation analysis of the House of Titus Macer in Aquileia, whose mid-imperial phase, during which the domus was inhabited and regularly maintained, is poorly represented. What has been observed suggests that great caution must be exercised when using data collected within urban sites to draw conclusions on ancient economic trends. To tackle this problem, our research agendas should target large extra moenia dumps more frequently.

Since 2009, a large-scale archaeological field survey – the Ager Segisamonensis Survey Project – has been carried out on the Northern Plateau of the Iberian Peninsula, in the Burgos province (Castilla y León), Spain. The aim of this project is to understand the Iron Age/Roman transition in terms of settlement strategies and landscape exploitation. The field survey has been undertaken in the landscape surrounding an Iron Age settlement and the successive Roman city of Segisamo – modern Sasamón. The goal is not the discovery of new settlements, but the recognition of the so-called ‘dwelling landscape’ and its evolution. In this article, we highlight our field survey methodology based on hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) instruments and the creation of a recording system of ‘aggregation units'.