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Excavation

  • Egnazia
  • Fasano
  • Egnatia
  • Italy
  • Apulia
  • Province of Brindisi
  • Fasano

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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)

  • As part of the ‘_Progetto Egnazia: dallo scavo alla valorizzazione_’ this season’s research concentrated on furthering investigations in the residential sector south of the forum. The new evidence, taken together with the data collected in past years, has identified almost the complete plan of two high status houses, one arranged around a central peristyle, the other a large atrium domus. Thus far, the urban plan that is gradually being defined presents the forum balneum and the two adjoining houses. As things stand, it is suggested that both houses were entered from the south side, beyond the edge of the excavation area, in correspondence with a road running west-east perpendicular to the line of the via Traiana. The latter was identified by the geophysical survey undertaken as part of the FIRB 2012 Project ‘_Archeologia dei paesaggi della Puglia Adriatica in età romana: tecnologie innovative per una pianificazione sostenibile e una fruizione identitaria_’.

    The domus next to the baths had a central peristyle, around which was a walkway from which a series of rooms were entered, provided with a well-organised system for water supply and drainage. The interpretation of the original layout is difficult as the spaces and structures were radically altered from the early 5th century A.D. onwards in order to reconvert this building, together with the baths, into a structure producing building materials.

    The other house was built around a large atrium (9 × 8 m) with a well-preserved central impluvium and rooms on all sides. To date, the period best documented by the excavations is the late antique, with a first phase ending before the end of the 4th century and rapid restructuring, both characterised by prestigious solutions in the spatial organisation and decoration, revealing the high tenor of the aristocratic residences in the areas closest to the forum. In the second phase, a small but well-built bath suite was inserted between the atrium, which was reduced in size and had a new impluvium, and the access road. This is new and interesting evidence of the moving into a private, elite residence, of bath facilities that until a few decades earlier had been in the nearby public balneum, now out of use. Numerous elements found in one of the rooms of this house suggesting the hoarding precious artefacts, perhaps family heirlooms. These included a crystal ichosahedron formed by 20 equilateral triangles (each side 2 cm), each of which inscribed with a number from the ancient Greek alphabet number system, with numbers from 1 to 20.

    With its new layout the domus was only used for a few decades until, during the 5th century, it was obliterated by the religious building identified in 2014, with a longitudinal plan, three aisles and a quadrangular apse. The Christian monument incorporated the foundation structures on the east side of the residence, while the atrium area became an open space leading to the new structure, with wells linked to the large cistern that collected the water from the impluvia. At the same time, close by, the ancient peristyle house and the disused baths were transformed into a factory for making the lime and building materials clearly required by the large construction sites nearby. The complex vitality of the city’s urban plan, even in the profound transformations of the late antique landscape, is becoming increasingly clear.

  • Gianluca Mastrocinque - Università degli Studi di Bari – Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità 

Director

  • Maria Raffaella Cassano - Università degli Studi di Bari, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia

Team

  • Assunta Cocchiaro
  • Adriana Sciacovelli
  • Alessandra Vivacqua
  • Marco Campese - Università degli Studi di Bari – Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità
  • Michele Cuccovillo - Università degli Studi di Bari – Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità
  • Vincenzo Berloco - Università degli Studi di Bari – Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità

Research Body

  • Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro

Funding Body

  • Comune di Fasano
  • Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro

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