Villa Magna

Field Season 2010

This year is the fifth and final season of excavation and analysis at Villa Magna. At the end of the season 2009, the trenches of Area D were backfilled. In 2010 the field has been replanted with alfalfa and nothing is visible of the excavation. Our focus this year is on the area of the Casale, in particular the area to the south of the casale, where a series of medieval huts and the Roman baths were identified, and the Monastery, where we aim to identify the earliest phases of the church, and the structures of the Roman villa emerging beneath the medieval occupation.

Our team consists of a reduced group, mostly people who have been digging with us for the past few years, with a couple of new additions. We have also been joined by dozens of students from the Liceo Classico (Anagni) and the Liceo Scientifico (Anagni).

Casale

At the Casale, Raffaele is opening back up an area of the winery to examine the drainage of some of the tanks: we are verifying hypotheses about the circulation of must in the building. Behind the Casale, Andrea has been using a bobcat to locate limits of the Roman structures of bath, atrium and corridor to the south of the winery. He has opened an area which has a small window onto a corridor of the Roman building, visible right below the topsoil. The surfaces around it are medieval and it appears that the corridor and the window were used as drains in the middle ages. We cannot wait to open up the drain and see what was deposited there. Ismini and Giorgio put a trench in the cistern that she and Nick studied last year. They have revealed five channels for lead fistulae pumping clean water into the cistern, one of which has some pipe still remaining in the wall, below the level of the spring water which continues to flow into the cistern some 1.8 m below the current ground level. Darian, Roberta and Federica continue their excavation of the medieval huts. This week they revealed a lovely hearth and two very large silos, which relate to the earliest huts over a large layer of building rubble and destroyed structures. Janine came back to site to review the documentation for the winery – bringing with her a lovely new baby Millie and Matt Williams who babysat while Janine worked.

Monastery

On the road, Marco has been working with a group of high-school students to clarify the Roman structure which was converted into a telephone service tower in the mid twentieth century. Cleaning along the cut made for the twentieth-century road, the foundations of the tall, articulated structure came to light, showing the ground level of the Roman period to have been much higher than it is at present. Nineteenth-century photographs identify the structure as a Roman fountain, and Marco is working to identify the function of the structure, and explore the implications of its location for the topography of the villa.
Megan went back to the chapel after two year’s hiatus. She had already excavated all of the medieval phases but wanted to examine the chapel as a window onto the earlier uses of the structure. She excavated the remaining early marble-lined tombs and has revealed several courses of a brick building, which predates the opus listatum church and narthex. She is currently cleaning the foundation offset of this building and the construction material associated with it. Cori continues her meticulous excavation of the cemetery, with the crack team of anthropologists: Erika, Sam and Joey lending a hand. All were cheered when Luciano cleared the bottom of a tomb in the narthex to reveal bedrock – no more burials. Farés came to visit one day and was put to work removing the fill of the foundation trench of the narthex. Giorgio and Mike have emptied a pit and revealed more of the paved courtyard. Mike then started excavating another very large pit cut into the paved surface, and he is still pulling out monstrous stones. Giorgio, recently joined by Serena, have been excavating the destruction layers of an oblong sunken floor building, located in the area of the presumed portico of the Roman building. Materials from the destruction suggest a date of the seventh century, the gold coin, dated to Justianian I, must have been residual. Meg has been pulling out the floors of the monastery, and the contexts which predate the construction of the monastery. One large tomb of the cloister has been removed, and two smaller tombs of the monastic courtyard have come out. One large diagonal wall, perhaps for defensive purposes, abuts the narthex wall. Pavers are visible under the tomb cuts and the bottom of the foundation trench.

— Caroline Goodson· Jun 20, 10:18