In general, Roman-period archaeological research in the regions north of the Roman Empire is site-based. Settlement research follows a standard pattern, whereby usually three different scale levels of analysis are distinguished. The first level focuses on artefacts, such as pottery and metal objects, which are classified according to their origin: locally produced or Roman imports. The second level deals with the individual units which together define the settlement: farmhouses, outbuildings, wells, furnaces for iron production etc. The third level involves attempts to reconstruct the life span, layout and development of the settlement as a whole. An alternative – opposite – line of enquiry focuses on macroregional patterns. Several researchers, for example, have carried out detailed inventories of Roman objects found in Germania Magna. The intermediate regional level of analysis, however, has received far less attention, and interdisciplinary analyses of Roman-period settlements in a wider spatial and chronological framework are virtually absent. As a result, several important research questions cannot yet be adequately addressed. This includes issues such as site location and landscape organisation, or the structure, origin and development of regional settlement patterns. In this paper we hope to demonstrate that our knowledge of the habitation pattern and history of regions beyond the limes could be significantly expanded by using an interdisciplinary, landscape-oriented approach, rather than by focussing on individual sites. We will also emphasize the importance of a long-term perspective when analysing Roman-period settlement patterns as a necessary prerequisite for a reconstruction of their origins and dynamics. The second goal of this study is to compare the settlement pattern and estimated settlement density in a pilot area with those in other well-studied regions, both within and outside Roman territory. Are there for instance any observable differences, and to what extent? In this study our pilot area ...