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Excavation

  • Calvatone
  • Costa di S. Andrea, area di proprietà provinciale
  • Bedriacum
  • Italy
  • Lombardy
  • Province of Cremona
  • Calvatone

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Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • A single large sector was excavated, Sector 2008.
    Extending over an area of 576 m2, this sector represented the link between the two large areas of the Roman vicus investigated in previous years. These areas were the ‘Domus del Labirinto’ to the north and the so-called Artisans’ Quarter to the west, an area characterised by the presence of service structures (storerooms? workshops?). This seasons excavation was undertaken with the aim of creating a single, large research area which would provide better understanding of the plan of the vicus and check for the existence of other residential buildings to the south of the “Domus del Labirinto”. The size of the sector made it possible to investigate surface layers, identifying the structures lying immediately below present ground level. Some structures were found which suggested the presence of a series of buildings, presumably residential, on a north-east/south-west alignment, in perfect correspondence with the urban layout of the vicus. Although these elements are still partial, they did seem to present a coherent architectural development, dating to a single period, showing not only a reciprocal structural coherence, but also a coherence with the ‘Domus del Labirinto’. In fact, these building seemed to develop along a single front, with rooms positioned in sequence one after the other, and open areas (gardens? courtyards?) to the east and probably to the west of them.

    Five opus signinum floor levels were identified, in varying states of preservation, presumably corresponding to the same number of rooms belonging to one or more houses. Of these floors, two were distinguished from the rest due to their exceptional nature within the panorama of known residential architecture in the vicus of Bedriacum: the opus signinum floor of a triclinium with an mosaic emblem of white and black tesserae and an opus signinum that probably belonged to a heated room. The discovery of the mosaic emblema was of great interest for its intrinsic and evocative value, which at a distance of fifty years is an addition to the catalogue of tessellated floors decorating the domus of Bedriacum, which includes the well known labyrinth mosaic. A break on the south edge of the mosaic did not compromise the reading of the decorative scheme: a continuous band comprising a wave motif bordering a panel decorated with an orthogonal composition of four stars, each composed of eight lozenges tangent at two sides, leaving a large straight panel in the centre. This panel depicts a high-footed kantharos with double volute handles and bell-shaped body, four smaller squares on the diagonal, decorated with four birds; along the border of the composition the large squares are reduced to rectangles decorated with peltae.

    The comparison with the ‘Domus del Labirinto’ – the alignment of the structures, triclinium mosaic floor typology, construction techniques -, together with the stylistic-formal analyses, suggest a preliminary date for the mosaic of the second quarter of the 1st century A.D.

  • Lilia Palmieri - Università degli Studi di Milano 

Director

  • Maria Teresa Grassi - Università degli Studi di Milano

Team

  • Angela Cerutti - Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Federica Giacobello - Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Francesca Ossorio - Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Laureandi, specializzandi, borsista Ministero degli Affari Esteri - Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Gioia Zenoni - Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Roberto Bugini - CNR, Istituto Conservazione e Valorizzazione Beni Culturali, Sezione Gino Bozza, Milano
  • Clelia Orsenigo - Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Laura Sperti - Università degli Studi di Milano
  • Andrea Baudini - Società Lombarda di Archeologia s.r.l. Milano
  • Antonino Crisà - Università di Leicester
  • Alberto Bacchetta - Università degli Studi di Milano

Research Body

  • Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze dell\'Antichità

Funding Body

  • Comune di Calvatone
  • Regione Lombardia
  • Università degli Studi di Milano

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