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Excavation

  • Poggio Civitate
  • Poggio Civitate, Murlo
  •  
  • Italy
  • Tuscany
  • Province of Siena
  • Murlo

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)

  • The2009 and 2010 season at Poggio Civitate saw the continuation of efforts to bring the copious volume of data already collected at the site closer to publication. Rather than continue excavation, efforts were limited to topographic surveys designed to add focus to our understanding of the place of the well-known aristocratic complex of the Piano del Tesoro plateau within a broader context of the site and the immediate region. This survey effort focused almost entirely on the property zone of Poggio Civitate known as Civitate A.

    Civitate A is a property zone that extends from the western edge of Piano del Tesoro approximately 400 meters to the west and north. It is bordered on its southern side by the medieval road that bisects the ridge of Poggio Civitate.
    This area has yielded evidence of human occupation of this area over many years of excavation. In 1990, excavators revealed the presence of metal roasting ovens in Civitate A. In addition, excavation in 1996 confirmed the presence of a well dating to the Archaic period to the east of the roasting ovens. Periodic excavation in the vicinity of these features has also yielded trace evidence of materials dating to the Iron Age, although more definitive contextual explanations for all of these data was never revealed.

    Our walking survey of Civitate revealed additional areas of concentration of ceramic and roof tile. One continuous concentration was noted adjacent a low ridge of natural bedrock running continuously along the approximate northern edge of the property zone. Given the extremely thin covering of topsoil preserved on higher points of Civitate A, we conclude that this assembly of material is likely an effect of erosion. Over many successive years, erosion from deposits containing archaeological material accumulated along this ridge, producing the concentration along Civitate A’s northern border. Archaeologically secure deposits, such as the roasting ovens and the well recovered in earlier years of excavation, were originally constructed in a manner that was countersunk beneath the original soil surface and thus were partially protected from erosional damage. As a result, the 2010 survey of this area appears to confirm that Civitate A was an area of occupation of Poggio Civitate as originally suspected, but any data associated with that activity that was not originally constructed in a manner that would have naturally protected the lower elements of the feature.

  • Anthony Tuck - University of Massachusetts Amherst 
  • Erik Nielsen - Franklin College Swtizerland 

Director

Team

  • Kathrine Krindler - Standford University
  • Mary Larkum - University of Massachusetts
  • John Lannan - Nathan Sargent Inc.
  • Steven Miller - Museum of London
  • Teresa Huntsman - Washington University
  • Jevon Brunk - University of Siena

Research Body

  • University of Massachusetts Amherst

Funding Body

Images

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