MARÍA DEL CARMEN MORENO ESCOBAR, JUAN FRANCISCO OJEDA-RIVERA AND LEONARDO GARCÍA SANJUÁN EFFECTS OF ROMAN RULE ON THE SETTLEMENT GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH IBERIA: A GIS-BASED APPROACH Summary. In the last years, the matter of the Romanization of Baetica has started to receive more attention, thus reactivating a topic largely assumed to be unproblematic in earlier approaches. Stemming from this interest, the present paper reviews theoretical and methodological approaches applied so far in the study of Roman rule in Baetica, before proposing new conceptualizations, research methods and insights that should clarify the development of this process of cultural change in this province. For this purpose, a GIS-based approach combining archaeological and geographic data is used to explore the settlement patterns and their diachronic transformation in two designated study areas (west Sierra Morena and Lands of Antequera). This approach provides the basis for a fresh understanding on how the local communities were transformed following the Roman intervention in southern Iberia. REVISITING AN OLD PROBLEM: FROM ‘ROMANIZATION’ TO ROMAN RULE More than a century has passed since F. Haverfield (1915) developed the concept of ‘Romanization’. Since then debate on this notion and the social and cultural dynamics implied by it has become elaborated, producing many different theoretical approaches aimed at exploring the relationships established between Rome and societies across much of west Eurasia and north Africa. Multiple models have been postulated to comprehend the effects of Roman rule, based on a number of theoretical standpoints including cultural substitution (Haverfield 1915), acculturation of the elites (Millett 1990a; 1990b), cultural resistance (Benabou 1975), the process of ‘becoming Roman’ (Woolf 1995; 1998), creolization (Webster 2001), cultural ‘bricolage’ (Terrenato 1998- a; 1998b; 2001), and hybridization (Jiménez Díez 2006; 2007), as well as explorations of Roman ‘identities’ rather than of the Roman ‘culture’ (Wallace-Hadrill 2008; Revell 2009; Aldo 2010; Whitmarsh 2010). All these methodologies share some traits, such as, for example, a keener interest in material culture as the basis to understanding the actual effects of Roman rule against the backdrop of a myriad of geographically and chronologically restricted phenomena; or an interest in theoretical models based on cross-cultural analyses of issues such as colonialism, imperialism or resistance. This diversity does not need to be viewed as necessarily problematic (let alone as a ‘failure’), but rather as a rich intellectual enterprise that has encouraged the advancement of the OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY(9999) 2020 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1