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Excavation

  • Gazzo Veronese
  • Gazzo Veronese
  •  
  • Italy
  • Veneto
  • Province of Verona
  • Gazzo Veronese

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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)

  • In October 2014, the University of Verona carried out a first campaign of excavations and survey in the territory of Gazzo Veronese – loc. Roncherin. The aim was to obtain evidence about the route, construction techniques and dating of the Roman road that ran from Hostilia to Verona, commonly known as the “via Claudia Augusta Padana” and attested in this area by photographic anomalies, in addition to itinerary sources (_Itinerarium_ Antonini 282, 3-4 and the Tabula Peutingeriana, segm. IV, 4).

    A trench, 55 × 5 m, was opened in correspondence with a particularly clear anomaly seen on the aerial photographs that has long been interpreted as a trace of the Roman road.
    At a depth of 30 cm below present ground level, the excavation uncovered the road’s ager (earthwork foundation), running in a north-west/south-east direction. It was about 10 m wide, and made up of dumps of local sand to a thickness of over 90 cm, and had been disturbed by agricultural work that removed and scattered its surface gravel in the plough soil. The earthwork was built on a paleo-surface with traces of ploughing that did not produce any datable material, and was flanked by a small ditch to the east (2.20 m wide). The ditch probably served to protect the earthwork from the marshy zone identified in the eastern area of the trench. The west side of the earthwork was flanked by a wide ditch (8.50 m).

    Both ditches were filled with levels containing gravel, brick/tile fragments, and malacofauna. Above these, in correspondence with the lateral extremities of the earthwork, were two layers of colluvium containing abundant cobblestones from the top surface of the road.
    Beyond the west ditch there was a necropolis of cremation burials situated on an ancient rise. These were arranged more or less parallel to the road. The excavations identified a burial in a sawn amphora, an “a cassetta” burial, and at least one monumental tomb in white Veronese limestone from which came a female head, two breasts and a leonine paw from a sphinx, various moulded fragments and several inscribed pieces.

    The grave goods and the monumental tomb seem to date to between the late 1st century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., thus constituting important dating evidence for the road itself.
    Levels of colluvium and the destruction/demolition of the tombs and funerary monuments, smashed into a thousand pieces attest the fall into disuse of the road and necropolis. The fragments were reused in a system to reclaim the area, whose interpretation remains to be clarified.

    Lastly, the area was covered by thick layers of peat, with the exception of the road embankment and ancient hump, later cut by modern agricultural work. A high-density survey was undertaken in the fields around the trench that defined the line, dimensions and composition of the road and documented the presence of several cemetery areas along the road and a number of rural settlements situated between 180 and 300 m from the road.

  • Patrizia Basso – Università degli Studi di Verona - Dipartimento TeSIS 

Director

Team

  • Alberto Manicardi - SAP società archeologica srl - Mantova
  • Marina Scalzeri
  • Valeria Grazioli
  • Nicoletta Martinelli – Laboratorio Dendrodata s.a.s. Verona.
  • Marco Marchesini - Laboratorio di Palinologia Laboratorio Archeoambientale Centro Agricoltura Ambiente Giorgio Nicoli s.r.l., San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna)
  • Cristiano Nicosia - Consulenze in geoarcheologia e micromorfologia del suolo - Vicenza

Research Body

Funding Body

  • Università degli Studi di Verona, Dipartimento TeSIS

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