centuriation
centuriation,a system of marking out the land in squares or rectangles, by means of limites, boundaries, normally prior to distribution in a colonial foundation. (The units above and below the centuria are explained by Varro, De re rustica 1. 10.) The practice appears with the second phase of Latin colonization (see colonization, Roman) beginning after 338 BC, perhaps at much the same time as apparently similar approaches in such cities of Magna Graecia (Greek S. Italy) as Heraclea and Metapontum. (There is no good evidence that in the Roman world the earliest stage involved marking out only in strips, rather than in squares or rectangles.) Centuriation was widespread in Italy between the 4th cent. bc and the early empire, spreading to the provinces with the projected colony of Carthage-Junonia in 122 BC. In so far as a single plot of land in a single location was...
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