BACKGROUND

The birth and transformation of the relationship between urban settlement and its hinterland can be seen as a process of social dialogue the results of which can be seen in archaeological record. The locational preferences and through these cultural choices and beliefs can be studied using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The Nepi survey collected material for such analyses.

The research area

The survey continued British research tradition in the territory. The director of the project, Dr Simon Stoddart, led excavations in the historic centre of Nepi during the early 1990s. The material from well-dated urban layers confirms the existence of a town in the 6th and 5th century BC. By studying the territory one can review the birth, development and transformation of local settlement patterns. The importance of revisiting the widely researched Faliscan area was in the fact that not all parts of the territory had been studied with a similar rigour. Nepi's location on the Etruscan boundary gives us crucial knowledge on the cultural identity and political organisation in the area. Emphasis was placed on the pre-Roman occupation. By defining hypothetical boundaries of the Ager Nepesino one could focus on the dynamics of changing settlement patterns. The combination of knowledge from past and present studies produced a more refined picture of the dynamics of different phases of local settlement.

The Nepi survey project was one of the new fieldwork projects under the umbrella of the Tiber valley project of the British School at Rome and is part of the Nepi project. The survey project was a collaboration between the Department of Archaeology of the University of Cambridge and Soprintendenza archeologica per l'Etruria meridionale (SAEM), co-ordinated by Dr Simon Stoddart of the University of Cambridge and Dott.sa Daniela Rizzo of SAEM. The field leader was Ulla Rajala, a postgraduate student in the Department of Archaeology, Cambridge. Elena Lorenzetti from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" has helped with the finds in 2000, and some of the material from the 1999 season was examined by John Hayes and Nicholas Whitehead. The main Roman form and fabric series was created by Dr Philip Mills (University of Leicester) as part of the later The Romanisation of a Faliscan Town project led by Dr Rajala.

AIMS

The main aim of the project was to collect a coherent body of data for the study of the changes in the local settlement patterns from the Bronze Age until the early Imperial period. The survey work around Nepi improved the quality of the existing data by systematic data collection. This improvement was essential in order to apply fully Geographical Information Systems (GIS) tools to evaluate the processes leading to the urbanization and state formation in the area. The detailed survey allowed us to understand better the accelerated post-depositional deterioration of the material over recent decades and the distribution of the surface material in the area.

The territory was sampled by drawing transects along the cardinal directions radiating out from the town. The methodology followed has been that of the Tuscania project (eg. Barker 1988), but because the four cardinal directions correlate to a large extent with the past and present road network in the area, intercardinal directions have also been employed to get a more varied coverage of the territory. During the second main season in September 2000, the research strategy was more detailed in order to get more specific answers to the main questions by testing locational hypotheses. Apart from that the centre itself is being studied more closely. The emphasis was to create an extensive coverage of the carefully chosen areas further away from the town.

The transects

One of the core elements of the project was the resurvey of some of the areas covered by T. Potter (n.d.) during the original south Etruria survey in the late 1960s and early 1970. These areas lie on the eastern side of the territory of Nepi in a highly dissected landscape, where ravines and hilly ridges or upper plateaux alternate. The results of the resurvey were combined with the survey work in the western part of the territory, which has been covered in south-west by the Sutri volume of the Forma Italiae, but in north-west there is practically no research.

RESULTS

During the first season a square area up to 1.5 kilometres from the town was studied. All possible land inside the predefined study area, allowing for constraints of time, was examined. In the end, 92 units were studied. The intensity of the survey work was varied according to previous knowledge of the area. All areas were sampled by line fieldwalking at the interval of 10 - 20 metres, but the collection of the material differed from one area to another. A field was the basic collection unit in the areas where T. Potter had not surveyed in the past and where previous knowledge did not indicate pre-Roman occupation. Elsewhere material was collected by lines or by modifying the traverse-and-stint method. The intensity of the collection was necessarily carefully balanced to find a carefully devised compromise between time and precision.

During the survey, 35 concentrations of material were defined. Apart from these, some areas of wash down material were observed. Some tombs and cuniculi observed during the Potter survey were also checked, as were some sites outside the actual area of the blanket survey. All the results point out to the large amount of off-site material over the area, but also significant differences between different sections of the territory, due to differing occurrences of past settlement in the area as well as post-depositional processes and visibility.

A view from Il Pizzo

Flints in the research area

Finds from Grotta Arnaro I

The preliminary results suggest that most of the sites Potter surveyed can still be found. On Massa, however, there are sites, which were not recognised by him - most probably due to changing pattern of plough. The Roman presences outnumber pre-Roman ones, but also signs of Orientalizing or Archaic occupation were found - although more thinly than expected. Flints were widely found in small numbers, confirming that certain aspects of prehistory have been under-represented in previous research. The largest amount of prehistoric pottery was found at Grotta Arnaro I, from a site the location of which differed from the published.

The waterfalls south of Il Pizzo

Il Pizzo. the summit

During the Easter holiday 2000 a team of four people did an intensive survey on il Pizzo, which is the earliest site of Nepi on a promontory south of the town itself. The strategy included a gridded survey of the top of the promontory along a base line, a 3D survey of the summit using total station and a pick-up of the wash down material in the western side of the site. Additionaly, a general map was drawn. It emerged that the summit had been modified during protohistoric and historic times. Most of the material was modern, but few Bronze Age, Faliscan and Roman pieces were found. In the slope a considerable amount of Bronze Age and Iron Age material was recovered together with observations of colluvial deposits by the riverside. The results confirm, complement and expand earlier unpublished data from the studies of Francesco di Gennaro (see his finds, see his report in the Nepi project website). The prehistoric material from this survey has been published in the Papers of the British School at Rome (Rajala 2007).

Il Pizzo: the riverside deposit.

The team in September 2000

Defining the boundaries of a Roman site

The season in September 2000 was a fine success. During the main season 141 units (fields, groves or parts of fields) were fieldwalked and documented. These units located mainly to west, northwest and northeast of the town itself, but also a few units were studied in south and southwest. During the season, 29 concentrations were defined, most of these revealed dominantly Roman material, but also prehistoric and Faliscan material together with vanished housesteads. Apart from clear sites, there are some areas where the surface material was washed down from surroundings and a few areas where continuous spread of material points to the existence of settlement site(s) or tombs. Finds include also Medieval paintings and road cuttings; also some tombs and cemeteries opened by tomb robbers were visited. Densities and finds will be analysed and classified more carefully in the nearest future.

A road cutting

A selection of finds

The most important finding is the wide distribution of prehistoric, mainly Middle Bronze Age pottery. Prehistoric pottery has been found from over a third of all field units, many of these present also flints. Furthermore, flints or other lithic flakes without presence of prehistoric pottery have been found from one sixth of units. Prehistoric, mainly Middle Bronze Age material has been found from all sectors studied. The richest areas with multiple undisputable sites are in the western and north-western sectors. The high concentration of sites correlates with an area where river valleys are relatively shallow and perennial springs plenty. The survey work in the north-western sector reveals that the Roman rural settlement in this area has it roots in the Archaic settlement; Archaic settlements were unknown there before this survey. As the true extent of the necropoleis of Nepi is unknown, the interpretation of certain finds can be disputed. But further study of these finds has helped to analyse ancient landuse around the centre of Nepi. Further results will be published soon (Rajala, in press).

Picnic on Il Pizzo