Summary (English)
The 2011 excavation campaign concentrated on four trenches, one begun this year. The beginning and ending dates of the bath complex were established in trench C, the largest and northernmost in the site. The first layout can be dated to the Republican period thanks to the architectural terracottas of the second-first cent. BC, the analysis of the walls on which the subsequent building was set and the cocciopesto floor, frequently restored and raised. The wall frescoes, stuccoes and a few Campana plaques decorated with egg and dart and Dionysian subjects date to the following period (first cent. AD). The oldest terracottas were recycled as bricks, an important chronological element. The kiln identified in C, probably for the production of bricks, was dated with Africana red-gloss ware and belongs to a more recent phase. The kiln is a square structure with walls consisting of superimposed tiles, and with the central support in refractory clay at the center. The exterior wall on the north may have been washed away downhill due to the morphology of the site. In the eastern enlargement the structures of Roman period rest on a north/south alignment of medium-large limestone blocks, in dry masonry. They were covered by extremely compact layers of earth dated thanks to the black gloss, in other words referring to the use of the site in Hellenistic times.
In order to investigate a new area, a new trench (H, 4X5 m) was opened east of trench C. As a result particularly interesting structures in situ were documented: the ridge of a wall more than 90 cm thick, oriented east/west, razed up to the foundation levels on a bank of natural clay, probably another terrace wall of the Roman complex, similar to the wall in trenches A, B, E, G (see preceding campaigns). Immediately north of this wall is a parallel alignment, built of medium-large river stones and a tufa ashlar: a pre-existing dry masonry structure of Etruscan period. In correspondence to the ashlar a semicircular pit with small stones wedged along the edge was noted. Inside a small “pasta grigia” jar with a flaring edge, flat bottom and “tenons perforés” handles, datable to between the end of the fourth and the early third cent. BC, in agreement with the Hellenistic phase of the site.
In trench B a deep excavation was dug at the base of the channel on the north side of the terrace wall in opus caementicium: the most recent material is a black gloss bottom with petites éstampilles.
The last trench investigated in the 2011 campaign was F, where the perimeter walls of the main basin were identified. It seemed to be flanked, downhill, by another large basin (connected to the first by lead and terracotta pipes previously identified) and by two small basins, poorly preserved: a sort of monumentalization of the water complex. The excavation campaign ended in this sector with the documentation of the layer of collapsed material inside the large basin, which seems to be datable to the chronological period of the sigillata africana, albeit in the lack of precision involved in this span of time.
- Claudio Bizzarri - Parco Archeologico Ambientale dell’Orvietano 
- Silvia Simonetti 
Director
- Claudio Bizzarri
- David George - St. Anselm College, New Hampshire, USA
Team
- Francesca Bellagamba
- Eric Thienes
- Molly Gayton - Tufts University
- Naomi Kaloudis
- Serena Bramucci
- Tristan Barnes
Research Body
- St Anselm College, New Hampshire, USA
Funding Body
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