0 evaluări0% au considerat acest document util (0 voturi)
40 vizualizări6 pagini
Two new buildings, labeled Buildings G and H, have been discovered at the archaeological site of San Gaetano di Vada through excavation and GPR survey. Building G has peculiar architectural features like hallways and apses. Building H has a large courtyard and building. During the Roman imperial period, the site was part of a larger harbor system serving the city of Volterra. Eight buildings from this harbor quarter have been uncovered previously, including warehouses, baths, and a guild headquarters. The recent excavations and surveys have helped uncover additional structures and artifacts, providing new insights into the use and history of this Roman harbor site.
Two new buildings, labeled Buildings G and H, have been discovered at the archaeological site of San Gaetano di Vada through excavation and GPR survey. Building G has peculiar architectural features like hallways and apses. Building H has a large courtyard and building. During the Roman imperial period, the site was part of a larger harbor system serving the city of Volterra. Eight buildings from this harbor quarter have been uncovered previously, including warehouses, baths, and a guild headquarters. The recent excavations and surveys have helped uncover additional structures and artifacts, providing new insights into the use and history of this Roman harbor site.
Two new buildings, labeled Buildings G and H, have been discovered at the archaeological site of San Gaetano di Vada through excavation and GPR survey. Building G has peculiar architectural features like hallways and apses. Building H has a large courtyard and building. During the Roman imperial period, the site was part of a larger harbor system serving the city of Volterra. Eight buildings from this harbor quarter have been uncovered previously, including warehouses, baths, and a guild headquarters. The recent excavations and surveys have helped uncover additional structures and artifacts, providing new insights into the use and history of this Roman harbor site.
Building G (southern sector of site) peculiar plan is characterized by a hallway, a central area with three apses and rich wall paintings (fig. 5); H complex area has a very large service courtyard (where a setting basin and a kiln are located) and a big building with two large apsidal rooms.
During the roman imperial age the site of San Gaetano di Vada was part of a wider harbour system called Vada Volaterrana; this was a sequence of docks, pottery factories and farms spreading trough the coastal plane between the Fine and the Cecina river, at that time part of the territory of the city of Volterra. San Gaetano harbour quarter was built, according to a plan (fig.1), during the Augustan age, to be abandoned at the beginning of the VIIth century AD; here excavations revealed 8 buildings: a large warehouse (horreum; fig.1 B) with almost 36 cells (figg.2-3), a little thermal bath (A) intended for the warehouses workers (horrearii), a fountain/waterhole (E), probably a large water tank (C) and a public thermal bath (D). In front of the thermal bath (D) the head office (schola F) of the guild (collegium) in charge of port activities management standed. Its members (dendrophori) worshipped the Eastern Goddess Cibele, whose lover Attis marble statue was found in fragments (fig. 4). Vada Volaterrana harbour excavation Fig.2 - Warhouse cell. Fig.1 - Plan of the archaeological site. Fig.5 - Wall painting with theatrical mask. Fig.3 - Warhouse 3D reconstruction. Fig.4 - Attis marble statue (Archaeological Museum, Rosignano Marittimo) 1 Lamp with christian symbol (chrismon) Vada Volaterrana Harbour Project 2013 excavation and survey report by S. Genovesi, F. Bulzom (staff) Website: www.diggingvada.com
A recent GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) survey allowed us to identify, southward of the area already investigated (Fig. 1), the structures of a new building, belonging as well to the same harbour quarter (Fig. 2). In July the excavation of this new building started. Investigations focused on a rectangular structure of 4x5,3 m (figg.3-4 ); although until now a few data have been collected, the very thick walls (90 cm) show its height should be a not negligible one perhaps to be related to a use as a water tank or a stairwell to upper floors.
In the empty space inside the structure many marble slabs, taken form others building, have been found, together with pottery fragments belonging to local wine amphoras and Tunisian olive oil and fish sauces (like garum) amphoras (Fig. 5). Vada Volaterrana harbour project Report 2013 Vada Volaterrana harbour excavation - A new building 2 Fig.2 (above) GPR plan of the new buildingc Fig.1 (left) Plan of the harbour quarter of S. Gaetano di Vada. The new area is in red. Fig.3 The big rectangular structure form the South Fig.4 The big rectangular structure form the North Fig.5 Amphoras inside the big structure Vada Volaterrana harbour project Report 2013 Vada Volaterrana harbour excavation - A new building 3 Even if the porpouse of the small artefact is not easy to understand, a first hypothesis can be proposed; the statue could be used for a family and private cult, representing in fact one of the ancestors (called in latin Lares familiares). Very close to the big rectangular structure a circular hole (figg. 1-2), used as a trash-pit, was dug according to pottery findings - between the Vth and the VIth cent. AD. (fig. 3). The most surprising discovery from the hole is a small clay statue, only 9,5 cm tall (fig. 4); forearms and legs are all actually missing. The style is very simple, showing no interest for details. A beard and hair, made by many small points all around the mouth and over the head, tell us the statue is finally representing a man. Fig.2 (above) The trash-pit seen from above Fig.4 The clay statue Fig.1 (above) Location of the trash-pit Fig.3 The trash-pit being excavated Vada Volaterrana harbour project Report 2013 Vada Volaterrana harbour excavation - A new building 4 In September the excavation was extended to the Northern sector of the area investigated by GPR survey. The building identified during the July campaign is actually extending to the North, where many walls in many different building techniques several phases of life, to be thoroughly investigated during 2014 excavation. Three rooms (room 1, 3, 4), whose purpose is not yet known, have been anyway identified (fig.1). The Northernmost one is actually the most interesting and puzzling; being characterized by a semi-circular shaped structure (figg. 2- 3) a sort of apse it can be cautiously identified with a small shrine. The chronology of this area and of the three rooms like in the Southern one will be better understood since next campaign, when well be able to focus our excavation activity inside each room, digging their full stratigraphical sequence. In late antiquity (Vth-VIth cent. AD) this sector of the building was used as a necropolis; two tombs, both of them reusing a big amphora for laying the body, have been excavated in the middle of the area (fig. 4). This kind of burial is called enchytrisms (figg. 4-5). A few bones allowed us to identify one of them as the burial of a 4-5 years old child.
Fig. 1- The identified rooms: room 1, room 3, room 4. Fig. 2- Room 4: semi-circular shaped structure. Fig.4- Enchytrisms from the middle of the excavation area. Fig. 4- Amphora reused as a tomb from S. Martino in Collinaia, Leghorn. Fig.3- View of the room 4 from above. Bronze buckle from the new area. Vada Volaterrana harbour project Report 2013 Vada Volaterrana harbour excavation - The survey 5 Fig.2 The Vada Volaterrana coast and the surveyed area The first week of Vada Volaterrana Harbour Project - 2013 was dedicated to the field survey of a part of the territory located between the roman harbour settlement and the mouth of the Cecina river (figg. 1-2). All along the coast, a number of workshop producing amphoras for local wine trade, utilitarian pottery and bricks developed specially during the Early Imperial Age. This major economic development was related to the interests of the aristocratic families of the city of Volterra, deeply involved in the local and provincial trade of the wine their own villas estates produced. In many cases, the traces of these workshops are still visible on the ground after plowing; the main purposes of our campaign were identifying their tracks and creating a map of discovered settlements. Surveyed areas Fig.1 Walking the Vada Volaterrana coast: a break. Vada Volaterrana harbour project Report 2013 Vada Volaterrana harbour excavation - The survey 5 Fig.3 Site with fragments of pottery and roof-tiles. Fig.1 Map of the surveyed areas. The wine amphoras workshops sites in grey. A dramatically smaller group of pottery fragments testify a continuous production of wine amphoras again until the Vth- VIth cent. AD but certainly at a much lower scale. A strong competition from cheaper foodstuffs of the Roman Empire provinces meant the workshops of Vada Volaterrana harbour coast saw over time their activity decreasing more and more. Five sites, called - according to archaeological terminology - UT (Units of Topography), have been identified (fig. 1). The findings of four of them revealed traces of pottery production activities, like the so- called kiln spacers - terracotta rings used for preventing the amphorae from sticking during firing - and burnt bricks belonging to the kilns structures. Among the pottery amphoras fragments - , almost all belonging to sea trade types - were by far the most numerous (figg. 2-3). The four UTs very close each other - thus belong to a single and wide workhops settlement, whose maximum development phase is dated between the beginning of the Imperial Age and the end of the Ist cent. AD. Amphoras were of course shipped at the Vada Volaterrana harbour (fig. 4). Fig.2 (left) Amphoras workshop site. Fig.4 Main wine amphoras types produced in the Vada Volaterrana harbour workshops.