Some of the earliest cadasters were ordered by Roman Emperors to recover state owned lands that had been appropriated by private individuals, and thereby recover income from such holdings. One such cadaster was done in 77 AD in Campania, a surviving stone marker of the survey reads "The Emperor Vespasian, in the eighth year of his tribunician power, so as to restore the state lands which the Emperor Augustus had given to the soldiers of Legion II Gallica, but which for some years had been occupied by private individuals, ordered a survey map to be set up with a record on each 'century' of the annual rental".[2] In this way Vespasian was able to reimpose taxation formerly uncollected on these lands.[2]
With the fall of Rome the use of cadastral maps effectively discontinued. Medieval practice used written descriptions of the extent of land rather than using more precise surveys. Only in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did the use of cadastral maps resume, beginning in the Netherlands. With the emergence of capitalism in Renaissance Europe the need for cadastral maps reemerged as a tool to determine and express control of land as a means of production. This took place first privately in land disputes and latter spread to governmental practice as a means of more precise tax assessment.