In the summer of 2011 the Gabii Project completed its third consecutive season of excavation and fifth overall fieldwork campaign in the ancient Latin city of Gabii. Over the course of three campaigns, a nearly 1-hectare area has been explored by means of excavation.

In 2011 a team of over 90 students and archaeologists participated in the work of the project. The 2011 season involved the continued exploration of significant tracts of the city center that were initially opened in 2009, with some portions being subsequently expanded in 2010 and 2011. This summary proceeds in order of overall chronology. For the early first millennium BC the previous excavation [2009] of elite infant tombs (see Becker and Nowlin 2011) signalled the presence of social stratification during the later eighth and seventh centuries BC. Now a series of seventh and sixth century BC occupation horizons within an elite compound points to the continuation of earlier traditions of social complexity. In addition, the deposition of numerous intramural adult inhumation burials in the post-abandonment levels of this elite compound suggests not only that a re-appraisal of adult intramural burial in the archaic period is required but also that the autonomous actions on the part of elites may have played a significant role in the archaic city.

The abandonment of archaic levels gives way to a re-planned urban center with a quasi-orthogonal layout, an occurrence of the later fifth to early fourth centuries BC (see Becker, Mogetta, and Terrenato 2009; Mogetta forthcoming). The evidence for this layout was first detected by means of the Gabii Project’s geophysical survey (2007 and 2008; see Becker, Mogetta, and Terrenato 2009; Terrenato et al. 2010) and confirmed by means of the excavation of portions of three side streets. This Republican phase of the city is yielding significant evidence for Mid-Republican architecture with three buildings being excavated in two separate sectors. The early phases of these structures are marked by well-dressed ashlar masonry, paved interior floor surfaces, and the use of massive, monolithic tufo slab pavements around wells and cisterns. These structures are multi-phased and see re-use and re-building until at least the first century AD.

The Imperial levels explored so far have yielded over 30 inhumation tombs, most of which are consolidated in an area that seems to be an ad hoc necropolis from the first century AD onward. Remarkable among them is a trio of tombs in which the deceased in encased in lead sheeting; one such tomb was excavated in 2009 and two additional tombs came to light in 2011. This cemetery demonstrates evidence for the contraction of the Imperial city, precipitated at least in part by the activities related to massive quarries along the rim of the Castiglione crater that aimed at exploiting the local bedrock, lapis Gabinus (a type of peperino tufo). The Gabii Project will continue to explore portions of four city blocks of the urban layout in its 2012 excavation campaign.