The Port and the Sanctuary of Pyrgi have played a fundamental role in the political and commercial history of the ancient Mediterranean sea. The analysis of the relationship between Caere, one of the main Etruscan cities, and its outpost on the sea to which it was connected by a large road comparable to the one linking Athens to the Piraeus, is the goal of the project. The strategies followed by Caere for the management of the coastal area in relation to its role in the mediterranean political and military scenarios will be analysed.
Pyrgi played different functions (port, settlement, sanctuary) thanks to its favourable geographic location along the Tyrrhenian maritime routes. Moreover, since it was abandoned after the Romanization period, Pyrgi is an exceptional case-study because of the possibility of a full analysis of its different topographical components and a large-scale research over its territory.
The excavations have brought to light a large sacred district, including the famous Sanctuary of Uni-Astarte and a demetriac cult place dedicated to the couple of deities Sur and Cavatha.
Since 2009, investigations have focused on the sector N of the Sanctuary, where a "Ceremonial Quarter", next to the terminal trait of the Caere-Pyrgi road, was discovered.
Research program for the year 2019 aims to improve the knowledge of the relationship between Caere and its Port and maritime Sanctuary, through geophysics and topographical research focused on strategic contexts along the Caere-Pyrgi road.
The excavations of the "Ceremonial Quarter", based on the results of the georadar prospections carried on during the 2018 campaign, will allow us to reconstruct the topographical asset of this crucial area and its relationship with the port.
Special care will be reserved to the conservation, through the "cantiere-scuola" which will involve students of the Scuola Spec. Restauro Monumenti, and a new project of enhancement, also including the virtual riconstruction of the site.
The opportunity to analyse one of the main ports of the Tyrrhenian sea and its relationship with the mother-city between the 7th and 3rd cent. BC allows to obtain an excellent framework on the model of territorial organisation in relation to the landscape conformation.
Despite several studies on the routes and commerces in the ancient world, the emporia and the port cities of preRoman Italy has never been systematically analysed, taking into consideration their complexity and peculiarity.
As a matter of fact, the overall investigation of the different districts of an Etruscan port is an extremely rare circumstance. If compared with other Etruscan maritime sites, Pyrgi is an exceptional case-study, having been abandoned after the phase of Romanization, circumstance that makes it possible to perform large-scale research over its territory.
Its development was strictly linked to a favourable geographic position along the Tyrrhenian maritime routes and in this particular context the sacred played a relevant role, as a connotative and functional element.
For this reason, the informative potential of Pyrgi is great and will also shed light on the choices of the metropolis Caere on the organisation of public and religious structures (institutionally dedicated to the mediation with the foreigners), nature and forms of exchange, mobility phenomena.
The port and the sanctuary were a fundamental pole of attraction for foreign
haunters as the outpost on the sea of one of the main Etruscan cities, as stressed by the Caere-Pyrgi road.
Whereas the architectural features and cultic aspects of the sacred areas are already well-known, in the last years the excavation in the Ceremonial Quarter in the area between the Sanctuary and the settlement is becoming a wide-range research thanks to the involvement of an interdisciplinary équipe (from 9 Departments of Sapienza University and other Institutions) to reconstruct the original landscape and the evolution of the landing place in the Etruscan period.
The buildings, dating before the implantation of the Sanctuary, together with votive deposits and a fire-altar, outline a residential quarter where ceremonial practices were also performed.
The new evidence sheds light on the organisation of the Sanctuary itself, according to the model of the main emporic Mediterranean sanctuaries.
The site was originally endowed with the availability of fresh water and a suitable coastal morphology, that favoured its attendance since the Neolithic period. The revision of the geological map is providing precious information about the morphological asset of the coastal plain. Gravimetric measurements confirm the presence of a vast shallow area N of the settlement, that needs further investigation to establish whether it could have been used in connection with the port.
The still on-going ingression of the sea and the alluvial deposits have radically altered the original environmental frame of Caere's main port, which was the first to be encountered along the Etruscan coastline sailing up the Tyrrhenian sea.
The study of natural and anthropic phenomena (erosion, flooding, landfill, reclamation, etc.) that have changed the coastal habitat over the centuries will provide a significant contribution both to the reconstruction of the ancient landscape and to the safeguard of archaeological contexts ("archaeology of instability").
As regards the innovative technical aspects of the research, new electro-magnetic methods and instruments (multibeam, slingram) are being experimented in the strip of land immediately N of Tp. A; results are being compared and tested by excavation.
The use of remote sensing images will be combined with geophysical prospections and the creation of high resolution GeoRadar and drone reliefs in coastal environment.
All these operations will guarantee the creation of a range of products such as 3D cartography, virtual reality and AVR on territorial and context scale, which will actively contribute to the progress of the research.
Extremely up-to-date virtual reconstruction systems (ArchaeoBIM) will be tested in complex environments such as the coastal one and lagoons.
A project regarding the virtual reconstruction through the 3D acquisition of structural remains of the temples and terracotta revetments has been promoted to improve the dissemination and preserve this exceptional context, which is being dismantled the sea ingression, for Cultural Heritage (Publ.Comp.26,28-30).
During the 2017-18 campaign, the drone flight covered the entire area including the Roman colony: this will allow a complete virtual reconstruction of the sacred area and its infrastructures by means of photomodelling and loaded on a same GIS platform (Publ.Comp. 42).
In relation with the fruition of the archaeological area, an enhancement project funded by MiBAC is being developed, also including an app for a virtual tour funded by Regione Lazio, which pivots on the new Antiquarium in the Santa Severa Castle.