COSA. ENTRANDO IN CITTÀ DAL PORTO

Abstract

Boasting more than 70 years of research, Cosa is one of the best-known Latin colonies. Its distinguished record of monographs
and stand-alone studies have shed light onto a settlement that, though small, has figured prominently in the discourse of Roman
urbanism. Its archaeological investigation, however, has ushered in narratives of settlement and urban evolution that, to this day,
are still predicated on Frank Brown’s vision and historical perspective. The distribution of the city-blocks, accessibility of the community,
and evolution of the built environment still resonate with the interpretative frameworks, and dilemmas, of Cosa’s early
explorations. In particular, the accommodation of the city grid and articulation of axes of traffic pose challenges with regard to
the accessibility of the main public areas. Recent campaigns of geophysical surveys make it now possible to suggest new ways with
which the city of Cosa was experienced and traversed. What is more, this essays emphasizes that Cosa’s hilltop settlement needs
to be discussed in tandem with its seaboard community. For too long, the Portus Cosanus has been treated as an entity divorced
from the hilltop settlement, driven, as it were, by its own agency and set of socio-economic realities. New explorations, wedded
with legacy data, bring to bear novel perspectives of movement and connectivity along this stretch of the Tyrrhenian seaboard,
foregrounding the routes and axes of traffic that moved people, commodities, and ideas across the site and beyond.

Keywords: archaeology, Rome, Cosa, colonization, ports.