The panel aims to contribute to the theme of perception and experience of spaces and borders in ancient Italy into the broader debate on identity landscapes. The landscape is fondamental in the historical-archaeological reflection as a palimpsest of past human activities and, therefore, of the strategies of appropriation and adaptation to the spaces that communities have adopted,
responding, at various levels, to long-term environmental and social contingencies. The settlement choices and the development of cultural practices, including rituals and display of power, are therefore to be interpreted in the light of changed forms of perception of space, as well as its boundaries and resource management by human groups that constantly redefine and negotiate interests, boundaries, and identities. The boundaries between urban-countryside, residential-suburban neighbourhoods, public-private zones, areas of the living-areas of the dead, and sacred-profane, between lawful and forbidden space, between productive areas and waste-reused areas are often fluid and permeable. Therefore, investigating the dynamics of the development of such spaces, thanks to the integration of archaeological sources, epigraphic, literary, iconographie, archaeobotanical and archeometric, will lead to a better understanding of the multiform perception of ancient landscapes. In the light of an anthropologie al approach to the reading of landscapes, interdisciplinarity will therefore allow the proposai of new interpretations for the case studies investigated, recontextualizing them in their ontology of physical places of production, encounter, confrontation, and mediation, but also as mental spaces, closely connected to strategies of ostentation of power, cultural practices, identity strategies.