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Excavation

  • Aquinum
  • S. Pietro Vetere
  • Aquinum
  • Italy
  • Lazio
  • Province of Frosinone
  • Castrocielo

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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)

  • During the months of June and July 2010 the second season of excavations in the urban area of ancient Aquinum was held , in the site known as San Pietro Vetere. The activities this year involved students, archaeologists and specialists from the University of Salento, and the presence of the CNR in Rome in order to carry out geophysical surveys. They covered both excavations opened in 2009. The first trial trench involved the excavation of a infant burial near a wall in opus reticulatum already identified. The tomb was made up with re-used architectural material and contained the skeletons of two children (between 2 and 4 years old).

    Particularly interesting were the investigations of the second excavation trench, in the area of the bath complex identified in the previous year. The excavation was enlarged through an expansion to the south and north. The enlargement towards the south led to the identification of a large heated room (probably a calidarium), whose walls were covered with tubuli and marble slabs. The cleaning of the collapse layer led to the discovery, beneath these, of the skeleton of a female individual. From the analysis of its context, location, the disordered position of the skeleton and the absence of evidence for funerary structures of any kind, it is not certain that it is a tomb.

    The enlargement of the excavation to the south has also led to the discovery of a room only partially excavated, with a pavement in cocciopesto, interpreted at the time as a piscina or as an open room.

    The extension of the investigations to the north revealed further rooms of the bath, whose western limit still lies beyond the edge of the excavation. It also found medieval pits, and a post-Roman blocking wall constructed with re-used building materials, as well as a series of Roman rooms where walls in opus reticulatum, but not always of the same period, show the presence of different phases of construction, aimed at the enlargement of the building or to the change of use of the rooms of the bath complex.

    In the central sector of the trench, to the north of the caldarium identified in the 2009 excavation campaign, a burial was discovered and investigated. The tomb was partially disrupted by agricultural work. It was built against a wall in the bottom of the bath and was made up of re-used materials (broken tiles and bricks) and contained three individuals buried in a subsequent period. The date is probably medieval, when the baths ceased to exist as such and its structures were reused as a cemetery.
    We also partly explored the underground sewer system, almost entirely conserved, characterized by a main drain oriented north-south from which different branches led at right angles.

  • Giovanni Murro - Università del Salento 

Director

  • Giuseppe Ceraudo - Università del Salento, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali, Laboratorio di Topografia Antica e Fotogrammetria (LabTAF)

Team

  • Giuseppe Romagnoli
  • Dottorandi e Specializzandi - Università del Salento, Facoltà di Beni Culturali, Scuola di Specializzazione in Archeologia

Research Body

  • Università del Salento, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali, Laboratorio di Topografia Antica e Fotogrammetria (LabTAF)

Funding Body

  • Comune di Castrocielo
  • Università degli Studi del Salento - Lecce

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