Season Team

• AIAC_2234 - Gabi - 2010
  In 2010 work at Gabii continued on two areas of investigation – a main, open-area excavation sector located north of the modern via Prenestina and under the authority of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma and a second area to the south of the modern road under the authority of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici per il Lazio. A private airfield for light aircraft currently occupies part of the southern portion of the ancient city. In the main excavation area, work resumed within three separate stratigraphic basins that were initially identified and opened in 2009. These sectors, identified as Areas A, B, and C, respectively, continue to provide evidence for multi-phase use of the site of Gabii and all demonstrate a complex site formation process in which the destructive intervention of both natural weathering processes and mechanical erosion have played a significant role. Area A, the locus in which two elite Sub-Geometric infant burials were discovered in 2009 (viz. Becker and Nowlin, forthcoming), continued to offer evidence for an occupational sequence that centers on an oblong structure whose limits are defined by a system of channels cut directly into the bedrock of the slope of the crater of Castiglione. These occupation levels contained a sequence of floors fashioned in crushed tufo. In Area B, a locus that thus far has proven to contain ca. 25 Imperial inhumations – including a massive lead sarcophagus excavated in July 2009 – has proven to be the site of a multi-phase structure, possibly domestic in nature, that includes a number of rooms as well as a tufo-paved courtyard containing a well shaft cut into the bedrock. The ashlar masonry of the structure suggests that its initial phase may belong to the middle Republican period, but subsequent use, re-use, and modification complicate the picture. The final phase of the structure may belong to the late 1st century AD, at some point after which the sector of the city that contains the house seems to make the transition from occupied zone to ad hoc necropolis. A number of possible tree-planting pits may suggest a post-abandonment landscape program that could be connected with the contracted Imperial urban nucleus that is presumed to lie along the line of the ancient Via Praenestina. Area C is a locus delimited by two side streets of Gabii’s urban grid that were discovered via geophysical survey in 2007 and 2008 (viz. Becker et al. 2009). Contained within the block is a multi-phase architectural complex whose last phase seems to be industrial in nature, perhaps a fullonica. Earlier structures in ashlar masonry are also evident; these are in phase with floors in cocciopesto. A feature of significant interest in the western part of Area C was a monumental rock-cut tomb that contained two adults; an adult female was deposited in a monolithic tufo sarcophagus while an adult male was found in a stone-cut loculus. The tomb belongs perhaps to a pre-5th c. BC phase of the area as adjacent structures are truncated by the creation of the quasi-orthogonal grid of streets, for which the terminus post quem is the 5th c. BC; ceramics recovered from the fill of the tomb’s cut suggests a date in the first half of the 5th c. BC. Area C also shows, by way of residual pottery, evidence for significant Iron Age activity – and perhaps occupation – in this part of the site. Investigation of these three areas will continue in 2011. In the southern work area (south of the modern via Prenestina), two new sondages were opened, with the goal being to intercept subsurface features identified in 2008 by means of the magnetometry survey. The archaeological materials in these sondages served to confirm the interpretation of subsurface linear features as elements of the quasi-orthogonal grid of streets within the formerly walled urban area of Gabii.
• AIAC_344 - Tempio di Venere - 2004
  Lo scavo del tempio di Venere a Pompei rientra in un progetto più vasto di indagine, prospezioni geologiche e geofisiche, che riguardano l'intero fronte sud-occidentale della cosiddetta Altstadt. Verrà studiato il rapporto fra città e bacini portuali, che dovevano localizzarsi a ridosso dell'area compresa fra Porta Marina e le Terme del Sarno. Il tempio di Venere rappresenta il complesso più imponente e rilevante dell'area. Con lo scavo si è voluto semplicemente verificare l'attendibilità delle datazioni fornite all'inizio del XIX secolo da Mau, il precedente scavatore che vi vedeva una doppia fase di realizzazione: una di età sillana, legata alla fondazione della colonia, l'altra di età giulio-claudia. I risultati preliminari sembrano indicare nuove datazioni per entrambi i complessi: mentre il grande santuario a terrazze repubblicano dovrebbe essere collocato nella seconda metà del II sec.a.C. (coevo quindi alla limitrofa Basilica), il rifacimento imperiale, al quale appartiene il grande complesso di horrea sul fronte, doveva essere ancora in fase di costruzione al momento dell'eruzione del 79 d.C. Le strutture di età repubblicana furono riutilizzate in età giulio-claudia, quando fu aggiunto un impianto termale. In un ristretto spazio a nord del porticato orientale è stato individuato inoltre un livello arcaico costituito da un crollo di mattoni crudi, la cui originaria pertinenza e funzione non è sta ancora compresa. Nella stessa area è stata portata alla luce anche un edificio sacro, probabilmente porticato, relativo invece alla fase -sannitica' di III sec.a.C., caratterizzato dalla presenza di varie cisterne colme di materiale votivo e rituale. Il santuario di Venere non è quindi creazione di Silla: il complesso repubblicano, già realizzato alla fine del II sec.a.C., si sovrappone ad un culto già esistente, pertinente alla Venere stessa o, come già ipotizzato da Filippo Coarelli, alla dea sannitica Mefite. (Emmanuele Curti)