FALERII, LOCALITÀ VIGNALE LA RIPRESA DELLE INDAGINI IN UN SETTORE STRATEGICO DELLA CITTÀ ANTICA

Abstract

Maria Cristina Biella – Claudia Carlucci – Maria Anna De Lucia Brolli – Biagio
Giuliani – Lorenzo Lambiase – Giovanni Ligabue – Filippo Materazzi – Marco Pacifici
con contributo di Lorenzo Balzerani – Lea Gerini – Simone Grosso – Nicolò Sabina –
Omar Scarone – Alessandra Sorrenti

The importance of ancient Falerii in the panorama of pre-Roman Italy is well known and is to a large extent
due to the intensity of the field research carried out on the site over the last 150 years.
Following in-depth research on the sacred areas and the necropoleis, in recent years the focus has shifted to
the inhabited area, which was laid out on the two hills of Civita Castellana, characterised by a substantial
continuity of habitation from the Middle Ages to the present day, and of Vignale, used almost exclusively
for agricultural purposes during the same time period.
Today Vignale, which stretches over 14 hectares, is almost entirely free of buildings and therefore presents
an enviable case study. For this reason, a new research project was launched in 2019 as part of the broader
project Giving Voice to a pre-Roman City: Falerii. This new research package aims to resume archaeological
investigation on the hill in order to understand the layout of this large sector of the pre-Roman city.
This paper presents the research path that has been carried out to date: this includes the re-examination and
systematisation of both the published and unpublished existing documents/materials, as well as the results
of the most recent fieldwork (multispectral and thermal drone flights, a GPR campaign and a fieldwalking
survey).
Interestingly, the analysis has highlighted the fact that the use of the plateau was quite diversified. The area
appears to have been divided into an eastern portion which, as was previously known, housed one of the
main sacred areas of the city and a western portion in which, at least according to the data available, an area
used for residential purposes was most likely located. It can be hypothesised that habitation of this sector
of the site extended from the Middle Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period, with later phases of used (early
Imperial and post-antique), albeit with a particular concentration in the Archaic period. The possibility that
the site was abandoned temporarily in the Early Iron Age must be corroborated through fieldwork and an
initial excavation campaign to test this hypothesis has now been confirmed for June 2022.