These excavations were part of “Progetto Veio” and involved the localities of Piazza d’Armi, Pian di Comunità and Campetti.

The plateau of Piazza d’Armi, directly south of the larger plateau of Veii and connected to it as the settlement increased in size, was continuously occupied between the 9th and first half of the 5th century B.C. The 1996 excavations provided new data about the site. The settlement seemed to have grown up around a male inhumation burial inside an oval hut structure, datable to the Early Iron Age, placed at the centre of the plateau in correspondence with an area later occupied by public buildings. Until at least the second half of the 8th century B.C., the zone immediately around the hut was free of other buildings and the hut itself was reconstructed several times. In the surrounding area there was evidence indicating a ritual frequentation and the presence of at least one other male inhumation burial, while the rest of the plateau seemed to be occupied by scattered groups of huts.

In the mid 7th B.C. century, the site underwent a radical transformation when a new layout was created around orthogonal roads, which delimited the spaces occupied by residential structures and public buildings (the oikos and large octagonal cistern). The presence of substantial quantities of architectural terracotta fragments (including an acroterion group comprising a standing figure and a dog) suggest there were aristocratic residences here until about the mid 6th century B.C. (demolished around 560-550 B.C.). This phase was followed by further reconstruction and the monumentalisation of the roads and, around the mid 5th century B.C., the site seemed to be abandoned (perhaps in relation to the first clashes with Rome, with the exploits of the Fabii and the battle of Cremera). After the Roman conquest of Veii, the site was reoccupied when at least a production site was set up on the plateau in the mid Republican period. Subsequently, the area was sporadically used until at least the medieval period, when the site saw some stable occupation (9th-11th centuries) and defensive walls were built, which have previously been attributed to the archaic period.

At Pian di Comunità the excavations, also begun in 1996, aimed to investigate the monumental terraced complex intercepted by Rodolfo Lanciani in 1889 on the hill summit at 126 m a.s.l., and to check the Torelli’s interpretation that this was the arx of Veii, where according to the sources the temple of Juno Regina stood.

To date the excavations have not uncovered any remains attributable to an Etruscan temple or monumental complex. However, the archaeological materials found during the excavations or in the immediate area, indicate the presence of several decorated buildings at various times between the second half of the 6th century and the first quarter of the 5th century B.C., which does strengthen the hypothesis that the temple of Juno stood here. The potters’ quarter was also uncovered at Comunità, with kilns for Etrusco-Corinthian and bucchero ceramics, and is thought to have been set up in the late Orientalizing phase. This quarter, preceded by an area of huts, developed along a road and included kilns with vertical draft, separation pits, and a large rectangular cistern. In the second half of the 6th century B.C. the area changed: the pottery workshop was abandoned and a large road and several containing walls must have given the hill slope a terraced appearance. This new urban organization may have been associated with the building of a temple structure that has yet to be identified.

Since 2011, the area in the locality of Campetti, in the north-western part of the plateau, has also been part of “Progetto Veio”. This area presented little in the way of natural defences and was not bordered by a watercourse. Between 2003 and 2008, the then Archaeological Superintendency for South Etruria undertook extensive research along the edge of the plateau and opened a trench in order to investigate the archaic defensive walls. The trench reached natural and identified an earthwork, datable to the transition between the Final Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, prior to the first occupation on the plateau.

The earthwork fortification was rebuilt several times and lasted until the archaic period, when it was substituted by a substantial curtain wall in opus quadratum, investigated by a second trench, which revealed the existence of a small monumental gate that underwent several modifications in the Classical period and perhaps also the archaic period. The gate was rebuilt during the 5th century B.C., when a square room was built coinciding with the width of the wall itself, carefully constructed in opus quadratum and partially painted white on the interior. This small room, in which there were traces of the hinges, threshold, and the bars for closing a door about 1.90 m wide, had a thick beaten floor surface. Later, another substantial intervention involved blocking the inner entrance to the gate, whose fulcrum was moved towards the interior of the plateau with the construction of a new larger room and, further north in correspondence with what may have been a postern gate. A fragment of antefix in the form of the head of Silenus was found below the latter blocking. The fragment finds precise parallels at Portonaccio and in the nearby sacred area of Porta Caere, providing a terminus post quem of the second quarter of the 5th century B.C. Among the finds, there were numerous examples of bronze lamina arrowheads found in the occupation and obliteration layers of the gate.