Season Team

• AIAC_14 - Via del Borgo - 2003
  Interventions of excavation and cleaning carried out on the two terraces of the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina have brought to light and clarified the architechtonic articulation and the hydric organization of this part of the sanctuary. The result of the evidence shows a single arrangement intended to gather the waters originating from the sanctuary of Fortuna and to collect them in the fountains and in the canals of the terraces beneath. Upper Terrace. The upper terrace, substructured with a wall in "opera poligonale" and paved with sheets of tufo, shelters a long façade animated with four or five absidal niches with semicolumns, which form a rich nymphaeum in the complex. The absidal niches contained fountains connected with canals which collected the water in the principal fountain of the lower terrace. Lower Terrace. This terrace too is substructured with a wall in "opera poligonale" and paved with sheets of tufo. At the center there is a fountain, a false grotto consisting of an absidal basin paved with sheets of tufo and covered with a semi-dome. The dome contains holes for a collection of hanging elements, perhaps false stalactites and false incrustations which camouflaged the mouth for the outflowing of the water. A smaller basin outside collected the water that overflowed from the larger. A shelter jutting out from the wall completed the facade at this point. The excavation undertaken in front at the canalization restored several architectural terracottas. Beneath the pavement level a series of oval grave pits were brought to light, apparently ancient. It was proposed that these were pits for the planting of trees, relative probably to a grove. A series of canals cross the terrace for the collection of the waters coming from not only the fountains but also from the roof of the Aula Absidata, to be channelled toward the complex. At the end of the 2nd century BC therefore the double terracing was animated by play of water and by a grove (sacred?), with substructures in "opera poligonale," crowned by parapets, cornices, aligned drip-stones and perhaps with architectural terracottas.
• AIAC_15 - Ospedale Bernardini - 1999
  Durante i lavori di costruzione della nuova ala dell'Ospedale Bernardini, alla fine degli anni '70, vennero in luce i resti di una domus romana. L'edificio è stato indagato in più occasioni tra il 1980 e il 1999. Sono stati individuati tre ambienti che si affacciano intorno ad un peristilio e una grande cisterna. Una scala con gradini di tufo suggerisce la presenza di un secondo piano. Il portico intorno al peristilio è realizzato con colonne in laterizi e muri in opera reticolata. L'ambiente più grande è pavimentato con un ricco mosaico policromo databile al secondo quarto del I secolo a.C., come confermano anche i frammenti di ceramica a vernice nera, di fine II-inizi I secolo a.C., rinvenuti negli strati sottostanti il mosaico stesso. Lo schema decorativo di quest'ultimo è costituito da un bordo campito da file di triangoli; lo spazio interno è occupato da un esagono definito da bande e riempito da squame allungate, bipartite a sei colori contrastanti; negli spazi di risulta ai quattro angoli sono figure di mostri marini, due grifoni e due draghi. E' stata avanzata l'ipotesi che questo mosaico sia stato realizzato da artigiani ellenistici, forse alessandrini.
• AIAC_21 - S. Lucia, casa della "Contessa" - 2001
  The sanctuary and the votive deposit Modern reconstructive work on the 18th - 19th century building at the back of the convent of Santa Lucia has brought to light the remains of a sanctuary, perhaps a tesmophorion, of which remain two foundations and a votive deposit. The foundations, in limestone and earth, probably supported a small building with elevation in mud brick or in the "telaio" technique. The building technique and an architectonic fragment found in context permit a dating of the building to the late-archaic period. The structure was destroyed between the end of the fourth and the third centuries BC, and engulfed in a new building at the end of the third century BC. The votive deposit is composed of a cutting (2 x 2 m), containing two different depositions. An entire amphora had been placed at the bottom of the hole, in the mouth of which was found a pipe of terracotta, perhaps used for libations. Its function was to support a pithos, which contained numerous small black glaze vases, containers in hand-made impasto, and course ware containers and cooking vases. On the inside of a vase were animal bones and ashes, sprinkled also on the interior of the pithos. A loom weight and a needle suggest that the divinity to whom the cult place was dedicated was female. Among the bones of the sacrificed animals were those of sheep and/or goats, and pigs. Of note is the discovery of numerous mandibles, all belonging to the right side of the animals. A few pieces date to the fifth century BC, while the major part of the material traces back to the fourth - third century BC. The votive deposit was created in the second half of the third century BC with older materials, immediately before which the area occupied by the small sanctuary changed its use. The deposit could have been created following a piaculum, an expiatory offering made on the occasion of the closing of the cult area. The domus Approximately a century later the area became occupied by a house, built in opus incertum, typical of the Praenestine buildings of the end of the second century BC. The pavements in this phase were created with irregular tesserae of white limestone, arranged "a canestro" with inserts in colored limestone. In the Imperial period a new construction was added, which remained in use until the third century. Divided into residential and productive areas, the walls of this construction were richly decorated with plaster in the Fourth Style, and were repaired between the second and third century AD.