Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change, 2023
There is an apparent paradox in our narratives about the emergence of state organizations in Iron... more There is an apparent paradox in our narratives about the emergence of state organizations in Iron Age central Italy: on the one hand, we describe these societies as highly conservative and traditional, and, on the other, we have no problem imagining that they underwent a wholesale cultural revolution when states and cities were formed. Implicit teleological assumptions, rooted in what was called the ‘western tradition’, have rendered it unremarkable that self-replicating kin groups would blithely abandon centuries of relatively uneventful village life to merge into a citizen body agitated by new value systems and ideologies. When we instead make the effort to imagine their limited horizon and their deeply rooted world-views, it becomes much less obvious to understand why, and especially how, these changes took place without irretrievably shattering the cultural self-consistency of these groups. Building on visionary work by Fustel de Coulanges and other sociologists, the chapter argues that strategies of scaling-up and refunctionalization of traditional elements were deployed to adapt to and cope with the ongoing transformations. A sort of bricolage, in which established concepts were reworked to serve new and larger purposes, can help us conceptualize choices and responses in the time of the earliest Italian state formation. Some broader theoretical repercussions, which could potentially be applied to other comparable contexts, are also explored.
Italian Descent in Middle Republican Roman Magistrates The Flipside of the Conquest parrish wrigh... more Italian Descent in Middle Republican Roman Magistrates The Flipside of the Conquest parrish wright and nicola terrenato parrish wright and nicola terrenato
A geoarchaeological coring survey of the Forum Boarium has shed considerable light on Rome's arch... more A geoarchaeological coring survey of the Forum Boarium has shed considerable light on Rome's archaic landscape. We present the rst empirical evidence that substantiates ancient and modern assumptions about the existence of a river harbour and ford in early Rome. Prior to the growth of the city, the riverbankreconstructed as a high ledge at the base of the Capitoline Hill and a low-lying shore north of the Aventinewas particularly advantageous for river-related activities. However, the river valley changed signicantly in the sixth century B.C.E., as a result of complex uvial processes that were arguably spurred by urbanisation. Around the beginning of the Republic, Rome's original harbour silted up, and a high, wide riverbank emerged in its place. The siltation continued until the Forum Boarium was urbanised in the mid-Republic. In order to build their city and maintain river harbour operations, the Romans therefore had to adapt to dynamic ecological conditions.
This chapter demonstrates the applicability of C. Lévi-Strauss’s “House Society” model for consid... more This chapter demonstrates the applicability of C. Lévi-Strauss’s “House Society” model for considering the role of kinship in the early moments of state formation and urbanization in Iron Age Latium and Etruria. After a brief theoretical overview of the model, the discussion focuses on two main axioms which are often overlooked in the model’s application to the ancient world: (1) a physical house does not make a social House, and (2) a single House does not make a Society. This is followed by an overview of how material evidence from sites ranging from Vetulonia to Osteria dell’Osa and textual evidence from the Twelves Tables can be interpreted through the lens of a “House Society” to create new models for the development of complex social systems in central Italy.
This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of... more This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of Rome was built with a previously unknown tuff, of non-local origin. On the basis of detailed comparative petrographic and geochemical tests, it has been established that the blocks employed to build the earliest temple so far discovered in Rome belonged to a distinctive facies of tufo lionato that had never been characterized before, in contrast to what was reported by previous excavators. The blocks must have come from a quarry in the Anio River Valley, several kilometers from the construction site, making the Sant'Omobono temple the earliest known Roman building that extensively employed imported materials. The metrology of the blocks is also unique. This particular volcanic stone was probably chosen for its much greater resistance to weathering compared to the local tuffs, a trait that was essential in the flood-prone location, not far from the Tiber riverbank, where the temple w...
The Gabii Project is an international archaeological initiative under the direction of Nicola Ter... more The Gabii Project is an international archaeological initiative under the direction of Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan. It was launched in 2007 with the objective of studying and excavating the ancient Latin city of Gabii, a city-state that was both a neighbor of, and a rival to, Rome in the first millennium BC. Located in the region of Italy once known as Latium, the site of Gabii was occupied since at least the tenth century BC until its decline in the second and third centuries AD. Amazingly, in subsequent centuries the site of Gabii was never developed or even substantially occupied, nor has the urban area ever been the site of major, stratigraphic excavations. As such, the site provides a unique opportunity to study the development and structure of Archaic urban planning in Central Italy, both monumental and civic architecture, domestic space, and all other corollary studies. Since Gabii eventually became a part of the Roman Empire – first as a member of the Latin League and later as a town with municipal status – numerous important intersections exist between Gabii and Rome. This awareness of the linkages between Gabii and Rome is but one motivation for further archaeological investigation of this urban center. The Gabii Project seeks not only to explore and understand the archaeology of the city of Gabii but also to situate and contextualize our understanding of Gabii in the wider orbits of Central Italy and the Roman Empire. It is also important to achieve a better understanding of the urban development of Gabii herself and the relationship that existed among the cities of Latium in antiquity
This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of... more This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of Rome was built with a previously unknown tuff, of non-local origin. On the basis of detailed comparative petrographic and geochemical tests, it has been established that the blocks employed to build the earliest temple so far discovered in Rome belonged to a distinctive facies of tufo lionato that had never been characterized before, in contrast to what was reported by previous excavators. The blocks must have come from a quarry in the Anio River Valley, several kilometers from the construction site, making the Sant'Omobono temple the earliest known Roman building that extensively employed imported materials. The metrology of the blocks is also unique. This particular volcanic stone was probably chosen for its much greater resistance to weathering compared to the local tuffs, a trait that was essential in the flood-prone location, not far from the Tiber riverbank, where the temple was situated. The labor-intensive sourcing may also explain the dainty size of the temple podium in comparison to other sixth-century bc temples in the region. The choice made by the builders indicates far greater sophistication and technical awareness than they have generally been credited with. The new discovery is placed in the context of the quickly accumulating archaeological record of sixth-century BC Rome, which suggests a dramatic increase in the number and scale of monumen-tal projects in the expanding city.
Geomorphological investigations in Rome’s river valley are revealing the dynamism of the prehisto... more Geomorphological investigations in Rome’s river valley are revealing the dynamism of the prehistoric landscape. It is becoming increasingly apparent that paleogeographic conditions that defined Rome in the historical era are the product of changes since the Bronze Age, which may be the result of local fault activity in addition to fluvial dynamism. Through a dedicated borehole chronostratigraphic study, integrated by 14C and archaeological dates, and paleomagnetic investigations, we offer here new evidence for fault displacement since ca. 4500 years/BP. We present the failure of the sedimentary fabric of a clay horizon caused by liquefaction processes commonly linked with seismic shaking, interpreting an (ca. 4 m) offset to signify the existence of a fault line located at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. In addition, we show evidence for another (ca. 1 m) offset affecting a stratigraphic horizon in the river channel, occurring along another hypothesized fault line crossing through t...
The church of Sant’Omobono sits above one of the highest human occupation sequences in the city o... more The church of Sant’Omobono sits above one of the highest human occupation sequences in the city of Rome. Some 3.5 m of sediment lie between the earliest known Bronze Age occupation lens and the base of the foundations of the early 6th c. B.C. temple, a further 13 m above which lies the floor of the present church, reconstructed in A.D. 1482. The site was sacred to the goddesses Fortuna and Mater Matuta for more than a millennium, before one of their temples was converted into a church of San Salvatore, rebuilt many times and eventually rededicated to Saints Anthony and Omobono. The archaeological remains were discovered by chance in 1936, when the dense neighborhood surrounding the church was demolished to make way for new Fascist infrastructure. The site was spared from further construction, and excavations continued sporadically through the latter half of the 20th c. This work was carried out by a diverse cast of archaeologists employing an equally diverse range of methodologies a...
Excavations at the Latin city of Gabii in 2012–15 conducted by the Gabii Project have uncovered a... more Excavations at the Latin city of Gabii in 2012–15 conducted by the Gabii Project have uncovered a monumental building complex, hitherto known only very partially from previous excavations in the 1990s. Organized on a series of three artificial terraces that regularized the slope of the volcanic terrain, it measures some 60 m by 35 m, occupying an entire city-block. It is prominently situated at one of the most central locations within the city, on the main urban thoroughfare at the important intersection of the roads from Tibur, Praeneste and Rome. Stratigraphic evidence and construction techniques date the original phase of the building to the mid-third century BC. This report focuses on a contextualization and description of this first, mid-Republican phase and offers a preliminary interpretation of this complex as a public building, with spaces designed for a variety of functions: bathing, public feasting, and ritual activity. If this is correct, it now represents one of the very...
Tufo Lionato is a volcanic tuff that was used extensively for construction in Rome, Italy, during... more Tufo Lionato is a volcanic tuff that was used extensively for construction in Rome, Italy, during antiquity and after; at least three varieties can be identified: Anio, Monteverde, and Portuense. The widespread introduction of Tufo Lionato in Roman construction is generally dated to the mid‐second century before the common era (B.C.E.). Another tuff, Lapis Albanus, is held to have been introduced during the third century B.C.E. Due to their similar macroscopic appearance, it is impossible to reliably distinguish visually among varieties of Tufo Lionato, or between Lapis Albanus and other “peperino” tuffs, nor does geochemistry alone always allow definitive identifications. A combination of geochemical and petrographical analyses is presented here, to provenance building stone from the Roman temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta at Sant’Omobono in Rome. The combination of techniques allows for secure identification of Anio tuff and Lapis Albanus, and their use in structures of the fourth–third and fifth–third centuries B.C.E., respectively, one to two centuries earlier than previously demonstrated. These findings show a diversification of tuffs used by the Roman construction industry earlier than henceforth acknowledged, and suggest the ability of archaeometric techniques to bring new perspectives even to such familiar archaeological contexts as the city of Rome. (Only an extract has been uploaded; contact me if you don't have other access)
Abstract Evidence of Bronze Age settlement in Rome has, for the most part, been conspicuous by it... more Abstract Evidence of Bronze Age settlement in Rome has, for the most part, been conspicuous by its absence. The later development of the city has precluded most excavations from reaching a depth sufficient to encounter any such deposits, and early finds have been mostly recovered from secondary deposits. A series of boreholes below the church of Sant'Omobono have revealed in situ deposits of anthropic activity, which date to the late second millennium BC, interspersed with thick alluvial deposits. This new data from the Forum Boarium demonstrates that early settlement activity in Rome was not restricted to the summits or slopes of the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, but also included activity on the banks of the Tiber.
Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change, 2023
There is an apparent paradox in our narratives about the emergence of state organizations in Iron... more There is an apparent paradox in our narratives about the emergence of state organizations in Iron Age central Italy: on the one hand, we describe these societies as highly conservative and traditional, and, on the other, we have no problem imagining that they underwent a wholesale cultural revolution when states and cities were formed. Implicit teleological assumptions, rooted in what was called the ‘western tradition’, have rendered it unremarkable that self-replicating kin groups would blithely abandon centuries of relatively uneventful village life to merge into a citizen body agitated by new value systems and ideologies. When we instead make the effort to imagine their limited horizon and their deeply rooted world-views, it becomes much less obvious to understand why, and especially how, these changes took place without irretrievably shattering the cultural self-consistency of these groups. Building on visionary work by Fustel de Coulanges and other sociologists, the chapter argues that strategies of scaling-up and refunctionalization of traditional elements were deployed to adapt to and cope with the ongoing transformations. A sort of bricolage, in which established concepts were reworked to serve new and larger purposes, can help us conceptualize choices and responses in the time of the earliest Italian state formation. Some broader theoretical repercussions, which could potentially be applied to other comparable contexts, are also explored.
Italian Descent in Middle Republican Roman Magistrates The Flipside of the Conquest parrish wrigh... more Italian Descent in Middle Republican Roman Magistrates The Flipside of the Conquest parrish wright and nicola terrenato parrish wright and nicola terrenato
A geoarchaeological coring survey of the Forum Boarium has shed considerable light on Rome's arch... more A geoarchaeological coring survey of the Forum Boarium has shed considerable light on Rome's archaic landscape. We present the rst empirical evidence that substantiates ancient and modern assumptions about the existence of a river harbour and ford in early Rome. Prior to the growth of the city, the riverbankreconstructed as a high ledge at the base of the Capitoline Hill and a low-lying shore north of the Aventinewas particularly advantageous for river-related activities. However, the river valley changed signicantly in the sixth century B.C.E., as a result of complex uvial processes that were arguably spurred by urbanisation. Around the beginning of the Republic, Rome's original harbour silted up, and a high, wide riverbank emerged in its place. The siltation continued until the Forum Boarium was urbanised in the mid-Republic. In order to build their city and maintain river harbour operations, the Romans therefore had to adapt to dynamic ecological conditions.
This chapter demonstrates the applicability of C. Lévi-Strauss’s “House Society” model for consid... more This chapter demonstrates the applicability of C. Lévi-Strauss’s “House Society” model for considering the role of kinship in the early moments of state formation and urbanization in Iron Age Latium and Etruria. After a brief theoretical overview of the model, the discussion focuses on two main axioms which are often overlooked in the model’s application to the ancient world: (1) a physical house does not make a social House, and (2) a single House does not make a Society. This is followed by an overview of how material evidence from sites ranging from Vetulonia to Osteria dell’Osa and textual evidence from the Twelves Tables can be interpreted through the lens of a “House Society” to create new models for the development of complex social systems in central Italy.
This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of... more This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of Rome was built with a previously unknown tuff, of non-local origin. On the basis of detailed comparative petrographic and geochemical tests, it has been established that the blocks employed to build the earliest temple so far discovered in Rome belonged to a distinctive facies of tufo lionato that had never been characterized before, in contrast to what was reported by previous excavators. The blocks must have come from a quarry in the Anio River Valley, several kilometers from the construction site, making the Sant'Omobono temple the earliest known Roman building that extensively employed imported materials. The metrology of the blocks is also unique. This particular volcanic stone was probably chosen for its much greater resistance to weathering compared to the local tuffs, a trait that was essential in the flood-prone location, not far from the Tiber riverbank, where the temple w...
The Gabii Project is an international archaeological initiative under the direction of Nicola Ter... more The Gabii Project is an international archaeological initiative under the direction of Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan. It was launched in 2007 with the objective of studying and excavating the ancient Latin city of Gabii, a city-state that was both a neighbor of, and a rival to, Rome in the first millennium BC. Located in the region of Italy once known as Latium, the site of Gabii was occupied since at least the tenth century BC until its decline in the second and third centuries AD. Amazingly, in subsequent centuries the site of Gabii was never developed or even substantially occupied, nor has the urban area ever been the site of major, stratigraphic excavations. As such, the site provides a unique opportunity to study the development and structure of Archaic urban planning in Central Italy, both monumental and civic architecture, domestic space, and all other corollary studies. Since Gabii eventually became a part of the Roman Empire – first as a member of the Latin League and later as a town with municipal status – numerous important intersections exist between Gabii and Rome. This awareness of the linkages between Gabii and Rome is but one motivation for further archaeological investigation of this urban center. The Gabii Project seeks not only to explore and understand the archaeology of the city of Gabii but also to situate and contextualize our understanding of Gabii in the wider orbits of Central Italy and the Roman Empire. It is also important to achieve a better understanding of the urban development of Gabii herself and the relationship that existed among the cities of Latium in antiquity
This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of... more This study reports on the discovery that the podium of the archaic temple in the Forum Boarium of Rome was built with a previously unknown tuff, of non-local origin. On the basis of detailed comparative petrographic and geochemical tests, it has been established that the blocks employed to build the earliest temple so far discovered in Rome belonged to a distinctive facies of tufo lionato that had never been characterized before, in contrast to what was reported by previous excavators. The blocks must have come from a quarry in the Anio River Valley, several kilometers from the construction site, making the Sant'Omobono temple the earliest known Roman building that extensively employed imported materials. The metrology of the blocks is also unique. This particular volcanic stone was probably chosen for its much greater resistance to weathering compared to the local tuffs, a trait that was essential in the flood-prone location, not far from the Tiber riverbank, where the temple was situated. The labor-intensive sourcing may also explain the dainty size of the temple podium in comparison to other sixth-century bc temples in the region. The choice made by the builders indicates far greater sophistication and technical awareness than they have generally been credited with. The new discovery is placed in the context of the quickly accumulating archaeological record of sixth-century BC Rome, which suggests a dramatic increase in the number and scale of monumen-tal projects in the expanding city.
Geomorphological investigations in Rome’s river valley are revealing the dynamism of the prehisto... more Geomorphological investigations in Rome’s river valley are revealing the dynamism of the prehistoric landscape. It is becoming increasingly apparent that paleogeographic conditions that defined Rome in the historical era are the product of changes since the Bronze Age, which may be the result of local fault activity in addition to fluvial dynamism. Through a dedicated borehole chronostratigraphic study, integrated by 14C and archaeological dates, and paleomagnetic investigations, we offer here new evidence for fault displacement since ca. 4500 years/BP. We present the failure of the sedimentary fabric of a clay horizon caused by liquefaction processes commonly linked with seismic shaking, interpreting an (ca. 4 m) offset to signify the existence of a fault line located at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. In addition, we show evidence for another (ca. 1 m) offset affecting a stratigraphic horizon in the river channel, occurring along another hypothesized fault line crossing through t...
The church of Sant’Omobono sits above one of the highest human occupation sequences in the city o... more The church of Sant’Omobono sits above one of the highest human occupation sequences in the city of Rome. Some 3.5 m of sediment lie between the earliest known Bronze Age occupation lens and the base of the foundations of the early 6th c. B.C. temple, a further 13 m above which lies the floor of the present church, reconstructed in A.D. 1482. The site was sacred to the goddesses Fortuna and Mater Matuta for more than a millennium, before one of their temples was converted into a church of San Salvatore, rebuilt many times and eventually rededicated to Saints Anthony and Omobono. The archaeological remains were discovered by chance in 1936, when the dense neighborhood surrounding the church was demolished to make way for new Fascist infrastructure. The site was spared from further construction, and excavations continued sporadically through the latter half of the 20th c. This work was carried out by a diverse cast of archaeologists employing an equally diverse range of methodologies a...
Excavations at the Latin city of Gabii in 2012–15 conducted by the Gabii Project have uncovered a... more Excavations at the Latin city of Gabii in 2012–15 conducted by the Gabii Project have uncovered a monumental building complex, hitherto known only very partially from previous excavations in the 1990s. Organized on a series of three artificial terraces that regularized the slope of the volcanic terrain, it measures some 60 m by 35 m, occupying an entire city-block. It is prominently situated at one of the most central locations within the city, on the main urban thoroughfare at the important intersection of the roads from Tibur, Praeneste and Rome. Stratigraphic evidence and construction techniques date the original phase of the building to the mid-third century BC. This report focuses on a contextualization and description of this first, mid-Republican phase and offers a preliminary interpretation of this complex as a public building, with spaces designed for a variety of functions: bathing, public feasting, and ritual activity. If this is correct, it now represents one of the very...
Tufo Lionato is a volcanic tuff that was used extensively for construction in Rome, Italy, during... more Tufo Lionato is a volcanic tuff that was used extensively for construction in Rome, Italy, during antiquity and after; at least three varieties can be identified: Anio, Monteverde, and Portuense. The widespread introduction of Tufo Lionato in Roman construction is generally dated to the mid‐second century before the common era (B.C.E.). Another tuff, Lapis Albanus, is held to have been introduced during the third century B.C.E. Due to their similar macroscopic appearance, it is impossible to reliably distinguish visually among varieties of Tufo Lionato, or between Lapis Albanus and other “peperino” tuffs, nor does geochemistry alone always allow definitive identifications. A combination of geochemical and petrographical analyses is presented here, to provenance building stone from the Roman temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta at Sant’Omobono in Rome. The combination of techniques allows for secure identification of Anio tuff and Lapis Albanus, and their use in structures of the fourth–third and fifth–third centuries B.C.E., respectively, one to two centuries earlier than previously demonstrated. These findings show a diversification of tuffs used by the Roman construction industry earlier than henceforth acknowledged, and suggest the ability of archaeometric techniques to bring new perspectives even to such familiar archaeological contexts as the city of Rome. (Only an extract has been uploaded; contact me if you don't have other access)
Abstract Evidence of Bronze Age settlement in Rome has, for the most part, been conspicuous by it... more Abstract Evidence of Bronze Age settlement in Rome has, for the most part, been conspicuous by its absence. The later development of the city has precluded most excavations from reaching a depth sufficient to encounter any such deposits, and early finds have been mostly recovered from secondary deposits. A series of boreholes below the church of Sant'Omobono have revealed in situ deposits of anthropic activity, which date to the late second millennium BC, interspersed with thick alluvial deposits. This new data from the Forum Boarium demonstrates that early settlement activity in Rome was not restricted to the summits or slopes of the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, but also included activity on the banks of the Tiber.
This book presents a radical new interpretation of Roman expansion in Italy during the fourth and... more This book presents a radical new interpretation of Roman expansion in Italy during the fourth and third centuries BCE. Nicola Terrenato argues that the process was accomplished by means of a grand bargain that was negotiated between the landed elites of central and southern Italy, while military conquest played a much smaller role than is usually envisaged. Deploying archaeological, epigraphic, and historical evidence, he paints a picture of the family interactions that tied together both Roman and non-Roman aristocrats and that resulted in their pooling power and resources for the creation of a new political entity. The book is written in accessible language, without technical terms or quotations in Latin, and is heavily illustrated.
Since 2009 the Gabii Project, an international archaeological initiative led by Nicola Terrenato ... more Since 2009 the Gabii Project, an international archaeological initiative led by Nicola Terrenato and the University of Michigan, has been investigating the ancient Latin town of Gabii, which was both a neighbor of, and a rival to, Rome in the first millennium BC. The trajectory of Gabii, from an Iron Age settlement to a flourishing mid-Republican town to an Imperial agglomeration widely thought to be in decline, provides a new perspective on the dynamics of settlement in central Italy. This publication focuses on the construction, inhabitation, and repurposing of a private home at Gabii, built in the mid-Republican period. The remains of the house provide new information on the architecture and organization of domestic space in this period, adding to a limited corpus of well-dated examples. Importantly, the house's micro-history sheds light on the tensions between private and public development at Gabii as the town grew and reorganized itself in the mid- to late- Republican period transition. Published in digital form as a website backed up by a detailed database, the publication provides a synthesis of the excavation results linked to the relevant spatial, descriptive, and quantitative data.
The research on Roman landscapes and rural settlements has never been more flourishing than in re... more The research on Roman landscapes and rural settlements has never been more flourishing than in recent years. A number of field survey projects have finally reached the publication stage, sometimes after decades of work in the field and in the lab. Key villa sites, whose investigation is complete, have been published and many more are currently being excavated. All this is opening up fascinating new insights into the social, cultural, and architectural development of the Roman countryside in a large number of different geographic contexts. As in many other fields of research, the relevant scholarship has been characterized by alternating phases of analytical and detailed work on specific sites and regions with waves of synthetic attempts at bringing the information together in comprehensive reconstructions. In the 1970s and 80s, for instance, a new model became current that was largely based on materialist frameworks and essentially envisaged a tight economic control by Roman senators over the lands of the Empire, with a large role played by slave-run villas involved in investment agriculture.
Evidence of Bronze Age settlement in Rome has, for the most part, been conspicuous by its absence... more Evidence of Bronze Age settlement in Rome has, for the most part, been conspicuous by its absence. The later development of the city has precluded most excavations from reaching a depth sufficient to encounter any such deposits, and early finds have been mostly recovered from secondary deposits. A series of boreholes below the church of Sant'Omobono have revealed in situ deposits of anthropic activity, which date to the late second millennium BC, interspersed with thick alluvial deposits. This new data from the Forum Boarium demonstrates that early settlement activity in Rome was not restricted to the summits or slopes of the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, but also included activity on the banks of the Tiber.
Geomorphological investigations in Rome's river valley are revealing the dynamism of the prehisto... more Geomorphological investigations in Rome's river valley are revealing the dynamism of the prehistoric landscape. It is becoming increasingly apparent that paleogeographic conditions that defined Rome in the historical era are the product of changes since the Bronze Age, which may be the result of local fault activity in addition to fluvial dynamism. Through a dedicated borehole chronostratigraphic study, integrated by 14 C and archaeological dates, and paleomagnetic investigations, we offer here new evidence for fault displacement since ca. 4500 years/BP. We present the failure of the sedimentary fabric of a clay horizon caused by liquefaction processes commonly linked with seismic shaking, interpreting an (ca. 4 m) offset to signify the existence of a fault line located at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. In addition, we show evidence for another (ca. 1 m) offset affecting a stratigraphic horizon in the river channel, occurring along another hypothesized fault line crossing through the Tiber Valley. Movement along this fault may have contributed to a documented phase of fast overflooding dated to the sixth century BCE which eventually led to the birth of the Tiber Island. The most plausible scenario implies progressive deformation, with an average tectonic rate of 2 mm/year, along these inferred fault lines. This process was likely punctuated with moderate earthquakes, but no large event necessarily occurred. Together, the available evidence suggests that during the early centuries of sedentary habitation at the site of Rome, active fault lines contributed to significant changes to the Tiber River valley, capable of challenging lowland activities.
*OPEN ACCESS* A geoarchaeological coring survey of the Forum Boarium has shed considerable light... more *OPEN ACCESS* A geoarchaeological coring survey of the Forum Boarium has shed considerable light on Rome’s archaic landscape. We present the first empirical evidence that substantiates ancient and modern assumptions about the existence of a river harbour and ford in early Rome. Prior to the growth of the city, the riverbank—reconstructed as a high ledge at the base of the Capitoline Hill and a low-lying shore north of the Aventine—was particularly advantageous for river-related activities. However, the river valley changed significantly in the sixth century B.C.E., as a result of complex fluvial processes that were arguably spurred by urbanization. Around the beginning of the Republic, Rome’s original harbour silted up, and a high, wide riverbank emerged in its place. The siltation continued until the Forum Boarium was urbanized in the mid-Republic. In order to build their city and maintain river harbour operations, the Romans therefore had to adapt to dynamic ecological conditions.
The church of Sant'Omobono sits above one of the highest human occupation sequences in the city o... more The church of Sant'Omobono sits above one of the highest human occupation sequences in the city of Rome. Some 3.5 m of sediment lie between the earliest known Bronze Age occupation lens and the base of the foundations of the early 6th c. B.C. temple, a further 13 m above which lies the floor of the present church, reconstructed in A.D. 1482. 1 The site was sacred to the goddesses Fortuna and Mater Matuta for more than a millennium, before one of their temples was converted into a church of San Salvatore, rebuilt many times and eventually rededicated to Saints Anthony and Omobono. The archaeological remains were discovered by chance in 1936, when the dense neighborhood surrounding the church was demolished to make way for new Fascist infrastructure. The site was spared from further construction, and excavations continued sporadically through the latter half of the 20th c. This work was carried out by a diverse cast of archaeologists employing an equally diverse range of methodologies and field practices, though none of this work has been fully published. Since 2009, the Sant'Omobono Project, a collaboration between the University of Michigan, the Università della Calabria, and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina of the Comune di Roma, has continued this research with the goal of understanding and publishing whatever possible from the earlier excavations and bringing updated methodologies to bear on the site. While preparations for comprehensive publication are ongoing, the present article summarizes the main occupation and construction phases at the site as understood after 6 years of work by the project. 2
Roman expansion is an endlessly fascinating episode of human history, usually explained as a viol... more Roman expansion is an endlessly fascinating episode of human history, usually explained as a violent imposition of imperial rule, followed by the diffusion of a dominant culture. From Charlemagne to Queen Victoria, countless military conquerors have drawn inspiration and legitimation from Rome. Yet, it is possible to tell the story in radically different terms. Building on recent research, it can be argued instead that the Roman empire was made possible through intense negotiation between elites belonging to a variety of ethnic groups. A ‘grand bargain’ was reached that was based on integration, synergy and access to power for the incorporated communities. Over time, an imperial elite culture emerged that was as new for those who had joined the empire as for those who had initiated it. An alternative narrative of this kind offers an unexpected example of how some pre-modern empires could be based on consensus and inclusion more than on threat.
Uploads
Papers by Nic Terrenato