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

Excavation

  • La Biagiola
  • Pianetti di Sovana
  •  
  • Italy
  • Tuscany
  • Provincia di Grosseto
  • Sorano

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)

  • This season, the excavations at “la Biagiola” continued the activities of preceding years aimed at uncovering and joining the trenches, and therefore the stratigraphies, to create one overall open excavation area and extending it at the same time.
    The 2016 excavations essentially confirmed what has already been published: a Roman villa was built on 4th century B.C. Etruscan remains. The villa’s morphological characteristics and the associated materials suggest this was a ‘villa rustica’. The walls and archaeological materials cover a very long chronology, which runs from at least the 1st century B.C. until the late antique period. The precise interpretation and dating of these phases is rendered difficult by the heavy damage caused by centuries of agricultural activity. The structures and related stratigraphies were later cut by a cemetery, mainly formed of earth graves without grave goods, but also graves created in cuts in the walls and floor surfaces. The numerous burials identified in 2016 were cut in the funerary stratigraphy that has already been dated to the early medieval period by C14 dating. No new graves were found with grave goods, like those found in 2011 with Lombard artefacts.

    In addition to identifying numerous burials that will provide important data on the site’s population during the medieval period, the excavation widened knowledge of the Roman production area with the discovery of the remains of a storeroom and the foundations of a portico linking a vast open area and a large building, which remains to be investigated.
    In the area of the ruins of the “Casalaccio”, the only standing remains surviving on the site, several walls were identified that were very different in construction technique and materials from the Roman, Etruscan and modern walls. It may be suggested, with due caution, that a medieval building existed on the site.

    The 2016 project also involved work to protect and enhance the site: together with the Superintendency, the “Culture and Territory” Association, in collaboration with the local administration, partially opened the site to the public.
    Lastly, some sections of wall were consolidated and the site was left open in order to undertake periodical monitoring for possible risk factors and further conservation interventions, with a view to its future opening to visitors.

  • Ilaria Bucci – Università di Torino  
  • Luca Mario Nejrotti - Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, LA3M, Aix-en Provence, France 

Director

Team

  • Alberto Agostoni – Associazione “Cultura e Territorio”
  • Chiara Valdambrini – Università di Siena
  • Manuela Mazzon – Associazione “Cultura e Territorio”
  • Oscar Campolmi – Associazione “Cultura e Territorio”
  • Riccardo Rossi – Università di Torino

Research Body

  • Associazione “Cultura e Territorio”

Funding Body

  • Comune di Sorano

Images

  • file_image[PDF]