Settling in a changing world, local inhabitants forging a new place for themselves in the rapidly evolving environment of the Roman provinces that affected each and every dimension of their lives – this is the core theme of the study before you. Generally speaking, the development of the northernmost provinces of the Roman empire involved creating a new administrative structure that included civitates and their capitals, the development of many other urban and rural centres connected by a network of well-constructed roads and a series of military camps, concentrated mainly along the Rhine. This can be linked to significant changes in the economic, social, cultural, demographic and political spheres. New markets opened up, new institutions of power were created, new lifestyles were introduced and people's mobility increased significantly. Particularly within the context of their local settlements, the rural population dealt with this changing world and created a new place within it by changing both the ways in which they inhabited and worked the landscape and how they related to each other. These processes can be studied by exploring the development trajectories of rural settlements. After all, the adoption of new materials, forms, objects and spatial concepts can be regarded as a way of redefining relationships within local communities as well as between communities and the outside world. This study is about individual people, families and communities actively creating a new place for themselves within the changing world of the Roman provinces and empire.

Where then do villas fit in? The fact that I have not yet mentioned the word ‘villa’ may already reveal my reservations about the term. These reservations stem from the difficulties surrounding the definition and use of the term, its limitations and its complex background. Although this theme will be discussed in more detail below, I would like to begin by saying that the phenomenon generally referred to as ‘villa’ is only part of a broader and more complex rural development. In my view, the strict and essentialistic use of a villa definition for both data selection and analysis could limit the scope of research and the understanding of the true complexity of the processes at hand. This is not to say that we should, or even could, ignore the term altogether. The study of monumental villas has been and will continue to be an undeniable and vital part of provincial Roman archaeology.