Falerii Novi: a new survey of the walled area

Abstract

FALERII NOVI: UNA NUOVA RICOGNIZIONE DELL'AREA MURATAI risultati di una ricognizione dell'intera parte murata della città romana di Falerii Novi vengono presentati insieme a quelli di una piccola area posta al di fuori delle mura. I metodi impiegati consistono in una integrazione di rilevamento topografico, ricognizione a piedi dell'area ed estensivo uso di un gradiometro ‘fluxgate’. I risultati permettono di ricostruire in dettaglio una nuova pianta della città, che viene presentata in questo articolo, insieme ad una dettagliata descrizione delle strutture messe in luce, che includono un foro di dimensioni sostanziali, un teatro ed un portico, una serie di templi e una varietà di case private. Sebbene in maniera preliminare, questi edifici vengono discussi nel loro contesto, anche in considerazione dei nuovi dati che questa ricognizione ha fornito sullo sviluppo della topografia e delle difese della città.

High resolution space and ground-based remote sensing and implications for landscape archaeology: the case from Portus, Italy

“…The current programme of survey and assessment of remotely sensed data has its origins in a large-scale geophysical survey of Portus and part of its hinterland (Keay et al, 2000(Keay et al, , 2005 conducted between 1998 and 2005. This consisted of a magnetometer and topographic survey of c. 220 ha, incorporating the warehouses and public buildings bordering the Claudian and Trajanic basins and areas lying to the east.…”

“…This has had a dramatic impact upon our understanding of the Classical world, even though many interpretational issues remain, relating to the form and nature of anomalies represented in datasets, the dating and phasing of complex data where little or no tangible evidence is available for use in conjunction with survey results, and in comparing results from different surveys (Alcock and Cherry, 2004). The large scale of the work conducted at sites in Europe, including Wroxeter in the UK , Falerii Novi and Portus in Italy (Keay et al, 2000(Keay et al, , 2005 has enabled a more detailed understanding of urban centre plans. Integration of these methods has allowed the mapping of archaeological features, including streets, roads, buildings, industrial features, cemeteries, and tombs, across a large area of landscape.…”

Integrating Multi‐element Geochemical and Magnetic Survey at Ancient Sagalassos (Southwest Turkey): Anthropogenic Versus Natural Anomalies

“…Magnetic methods have especially proved invaluable when studying the buried archaeological record (Aspinall et al, 2008;Sternberg, 2008). Over the past decades, magnetic prospection has evolved from the detection of small-scale site anomalies such as hearths, kilns and wall structures (Aitken et al, 1958;Aitken, 1974;Weymouth and Nickel, 1977;Gibson, 1986) to the delineation and mapping of extensive settlements, up to landscape scale (Hesse et al, 1997;Neubauer and Eder-Hinterleitner, 1997;Key et al, 2000;Gaffney et al, 2012). The acquired data often provide sufficient information to allow detailed shape analysis of the detected features, as for example the geometry of circular ditches (Linford et al, 2007).…”

Surveying the Townscape of Roman Ammaia in Portugal: An Integrated Geoarchaeological Investigation of the Forum Area

“…The result of all these developments has been an upsurge in the nondestructive survey of urban sites, both in Italy and in other parts of the Mediterranean. Large and complex urban sites which had hitherto been studied in a piecemeal approach that was largely predicated upon the monument-based interests of earlier scholars, were now being surveyed in order to rapidly generate plans of partial, or in some cases, complete townscapes, most notably at such sites as Falerii Novi (Keay et al, 2000) and Italica (Keay & Rodríguez Hidalgo, 2009). This has led to a revolution in how archaeologists approach urban sites, with survey techniques being used increasingly often to generate a plan of a town site prior to excavation as a way of ensuring that the excavation can be used to address targeted site-specific questions in a way that had not been possible before (Campana & Piro, 2009).…”