Objectives of the 1997 Season

[December, 1996]

Our main objective in the first season is to determine in detail the priorities for the next two seasons of excavation and to prepare a database of information that will be used throughout the project.

We hope to establish a site grid and, using a laser theodolite, we will study the current state plan in order to verify its accuracy, making any necessary corrections. We will examine the remains on the site to determine the degree of accuracy in the restorations of walls, thresholds, etc. In order to establish stratigraphy, we will take soundings at unexcavated points around the quadriporticus, including the hillside to the west, the end of the main axis to the south, behind the colonnade to the east, and in the central garden area. Using a proton magnetometer and visual inspection of the soil surface, we will also do a close field survey in an area approximately .5 kilometer around the excavated area. We hope to find evidence of outbuildings on the grounds of the villa, and will concentrate in particular on a property where our archival research has turned up evidence of a mosaic uncovered in a clandestine excavation in the nineteenth century. We will establish whether there is an accumulation of later material in the garden in the peristyle that needs to be removed before the ancient level can be excavated. We will survey the Roccagiovine area (particularly the zone around the church of S. Maria delle Case) to see if any remains of the fanum Vacunae can be identified. We will identify the land worked in the 1770s by Bernardo Pomfili on the Via Licinese. Allan Ramsay reported remains of a gate there, oriented toward the quadriporticus of Horace's villa, but this has not been seen since. We will do a sounding in the central area of the southern wing of the quadriporticus to see if there is any evidence supporting the theory that this was the main entrance to the villa. We will investigate the documentary sources for the history of the Licenza valley in the early medieval period for the possible light they may shed on the history of the villa from the end of antiquity. Finally, we will create a World Wide Web site.

Notes on Results of the 1997 Season

[October, 1997]

We worked from August 25 to September 12, 1997 and are now gathering data and preparing interpretations for a preliminary report, which will be prepared in 1998. In the meantime, these notes will give some of the highlights of what we accomplished.

Our work focused on five sub-projects:

 

Correcting the existing state plan; creating a grid system; creating a stratigraphical database for recording finds

The first order of business was to survey the extant remains, comparing our measurements to those recorded on the state plan published in 1994. We found and corrected several minor errors. We created our own grid system, which was then used to provide reference points in a topographical/stratigraphical database system we programmed in FileMaker Pro®, which will be used throughout our project to record and relate finds.

 

 

Establishing a stratigraphical sequence; study of western scarp (sector 1)

 

We started work in an area on the west side of the excavated area near the Vivarium where it was apparent from the Superintendency's plan (illustrated on the left) and from autopsy that earlier excavation had not completely isolated the structures present.

Our goals were two-fold: to determine whether the complex was larger than hitherto thought, extending farther to the west; and to find undisturbed stratigraphy. Three areas of sector 1 were identified and new features were found in each. Area 1 is a medieval construction, possibly a tower. Area 2 was an open area, under which ran a waterpipe supplying water to the bath complex adjacent to the east. Area 3 was a room or a nymphaeum in the baths . It had been partially excavated and restored in 1981 by the Superintendency, but the work was not published, except insofar as parts of the side walls are inlcuded on the 1994 plan of the villa (see above, left). As our photo shows, the pipe in Area 2 (seen on the lefthand side of the photo) runs around the side of Area 3, indicating that the pipe in Area 2 was a later addition.

We dug about a meter further down until virgin soil was reached, and we have been able to correct the published plan in some important details and to ascertain the back wall. Meanwhile, when we cut through the scarp standing behind rooms 1-3, an excellent stratigraphical sequence was found as well as dating material such as coins and pottery.

 

   SECTOR I

 Subject

Area

Image

 panorama

1

 

 panorama

2

 

 panorama

 3

 

 pottery

 3

 

 waterpipe

 2

 

 

 

Excavation of possible entrance to villa at southern end of quadriporticus (sector 2)

In keeping with one of our main aims of contextualizing the built part of the villa with the landscape as a whole, we explored the hypothesis that the entrance to the villa was at the center of the southern side of the quadriporticus, which we denoted as Sector 2. Our hypothesis was based on a passage in Vitruvius, in which we are told that whereas the proper place for an entrance to a townhouse is off the atrium, the best place to enter a villa is at the end of the main axis of the peristyle. Earlier investigators had similarly speculated that the entrance was here, as can be seen, for example, in the Superintendency's axonometric reconstruction. Similarly, Costantino Centroni wrote on the occasion of the Horace Bimillennium in 1993 that, "the entrance to the house must almost certainly have been located at the center of the short southern side of the porticus, where the land conditions were more suitable for an access road off the road through the valley that led to the consular Via Tiburtina-Valeria" ("La villa di Orazio a Licenza," in Atti del Convegno di Licenza, 19 - 23 aprile 1993 [Venosa 1994] 112 [translation by Bernard Frischer]).

As can be seen on the Superintendency's plan above, this area was previously unexplored, and no surface features were in evidence (for a photo of the area before we started work, click here). We excavated the area to virgin soil and found three short walls running perpendicular to the rear wall of the quadriporticus, as can be seen in the photo to the left. We are now studying the significance of these walls to see if they support or disconfirm the hypothesis that the entrance was in this part of the quadriporticus.

 

 

 

 

Electro-magnetic prospection of previously unexplored areas

Dr. Sandro Veronese of Studio ARCHAEOSURVEY performed electromagnetic prospection on twelve zones in and around the excavated area of the site. In nine of the zones, anomalies were found, indicating the possible presence of ancient remains below the surface. Interestingly, no anomalies were found in the zone to the south of the villa which is adjacent to our Sector 2. This is further evidence against an access road and entrance in this part of the complex. Equally interesting was the presence of anomalies on private property to the north of the site. This is a field known from a nineteenth-century report to have been clandestinely excavated. Investigation by the authorities uncovered a mosaic, of which there is no subsequent mention. Dr. Veronese's findings will provide invaluable help to us as we plan our strategy for the 1998 and 1999 seasons.

 

Architectural-historical studies of walls, foundations, masonry, restorations

Our architectural historian, Jeffrey Burden, began a systematic study of the plan, orientation, and building phases of the complex. He determined that the villa was oriented to the peak of a nearby mountain that is visible at all points on the site; and he established that the design of the original villa was modular,i.e. based on a repeating set of dimensions.

Project Goals | 1997 Season | 1997 Team | 1998 Season
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