LA FORMA DELLA VELIA. GEOLOGIA, MORFOLOGIA E IMMAGINE DI UN COLLE DI ROMA ANTICA

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a core drilling campaign carried out in the eastern part of the Temple of
Venus and Rome. The investigations, promoted as part of the Velia Project of the Department of Science
of Antiquities, are framed within a complex topographic and orographic system of the ancient city, largely
cancelled by an uninterrupted succession of urban interventions (from ancient times to contemporary era),
whose preliminary reading was fundamental for the analysis of the results of the drilling. These highlighted
a succession of interventions, which began with a levelling activity along the north-south (larger) and westeast
(less important) directions that erased the archaeological stratification prior to the imperial age, period
to which almost all the materials found in the perforations seem to date. The sequence, in the lower part of
the deposit (S01, S02, S03, S05, S07), of elements attributable to foundations and structures agrees with the
heights of the nearby Nero arcaded street, also leads to assigning intervention to the urban redevelopment
following the fire of 64 AD. The results of the core samples would therefore seem to allow us to hypothesize
the shape and extent of this intervention, on which the Hadrianic temple was later built transforming this
part of the city.