Fasti Online Home | Switch To Fasti Archaeological Conservation | Survey
logo

Excavation

  • Monte Pallano
  • Val di Sangro
  •  

    Tools

    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)

    • Excavation of a farm building (ACQ 10000) discovered in 2002, and excavated in 2006 and 2007 was completed. The building is now known to be c. 5 × 10 m; it had a tiled roof, but no internal walls. Built in the first half of the first century A.D., it was occupied until the Hadrianic period, as pottery and numismatic evidence show; then it seems to have been abandoned after a single catastrophic event which brought down at least part of the roof. An earlier phase is represented by two wall stubs and residual late Hellenistic pottery; however the Roman phase involved cutting back into the hillside and levelling the ground surface (the natural marl was smoothed as a floor surface), mostly removing earlier phases. The building was probably used for processing of agricultural produce and secondary products from stock-raising. Previously dolia inscribed with what was presumably their volume (17, 5) had been found in the building.

      This season a shallow rectangular mortared basin, resting on a raft of cuboid cobbles, and water-proofed with a thin veneer of cocciopesto, was found in the NW corner. The function of the basin is as yet undefined; it appears to drain into one of five sub-circular pits cut into the floor. These were heterogeneous in terms of the material found within them; but three were characterised by the same concentrations of carbonised fruit (flesh and seeds) which had been noted in 2007 (Shelton 2008). Since one of these pits seems to drain the basin, it is likely that the fruit remains are derived from a food production process involving the basin (rather than representing waste, whether accreted casually or dumped as a midden). Other activities taking place at various times are weaving (20 plus loomweights were found together, with others found in previous seasons); and perhaps bone working (a long-horn cow horn found on the floor next to an iron knife).

      The building was not reconstructed, although a crude wall stub belonging to a later horizon was located to the west; but continued anthropogene activity in the area is suggested by the accumulation of faunal, and anthropogenic material in its post-collapse layers; evidence of late Roman frequentation has been noted nearby (Fasti Online report 2007). The post-collapse assemblage implies continued habitation nearby: it seems that our building was part of larger farm complex nearby, now in heavily-wooded ground. This would account for the earlier residual material and quantities of tile noted in the woods, and might well be the source, through colluviation, of the surface assemblages identified by field survey in the 1990s by John Lloyd and his colleagues: Scatters 7 and possibly 9. This location lies at the watershed of two hydrological systems, conforming to what is known of the preferred positions of Roman farm sites around Monte Pallano. Field survey nears Archi and San Giovanni di Tornareccio produced a small number of surface signatures compatible with occupation sites, ranging from the Neolithic to the Roman period.

    • Edward Bispham - Oxford University 

    Director

    • Scott Pike - Willamette University
    • Susan Kane - Oberlin College

    Team

    • Aaron Wolf - Oberlin College
    • Andrew Korzun - Willamette University
    • Andrew Wentworth - Willamette University
    • Barbara Percival - Oberlin College
    • Chris Noon - University of Oxford
    • Collette Weston - Oxford University
    • Dimitri Macris - Oberlin College
    • Eli Goldberg - Oberlin College
    • Hannah Brewer - Oberlin College
    • Hannah Snell - Oxford University
    • Ilana Greenslade - Willamette University
    • James Countryman - Oberlin College
    • Jessa Fowler - Willamette University
    • Jessica Myers - Willamette University
    • Jonathan Vimr - Oberlin College
    • Katherine Croft - Oxford University
    • Laura Wilke - Oberlin College
    • Paige Morton - Willamette University
    • Rachel Wilkinson - Oxford University
    • Sam Carrier - Oberlin College, Ohio
    • Sophie Graham - Oxford University
    • Vanessa Baldwin - Oxford University
    • Whitney Price - Willamette University
    • Michael MacKinnon - University of Winnipeg
    • Emily Hamilton - Pennsylvania University
    • China Shelton - Boston Univeristy
    • Robyn Veal - University of Sydney
    • Nicholas Wolff - Boston University
    • Karen Harvey
    • Victoria Werner
    • Thomas Leppard - Brown University
    • Archer Martin - American Academy in Rome
    • Keith Swift - University of Austin Texas
    • Raffaele Palma - Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli
    • Andrea Canini - Oberlin College, Ohio
    • Chris Motz - Oberlin College, Ohio
    • Neville McFerrin - Oberlin College, Ohio
    • Beatrice Fidelibus - Universtà degli Studi di Firenze
    • Simon Gregory - Stealth College

    Research Body

    • Oberlin College, Ohio
    • Oxford University
    • The British School at Rome
    • Willamette University

    Funding Body

    • Centre for Ancient Studies and Archaeology
    • Oxford University - Craven Committee

    Images

    • No files have been added yet