Annual Report 2008-9 - The British School at Rome

A RCHAEOLOGY
Archaeology enjoyed yet another successful year of
activity. Work focused primarily upon its flagship research
programme — the Roman Ports Project — which involved all
staff in a second season of excavation and survey at Portus.
There was also a first meeting of active participants in the
Roman Port Networks in the Mediterranean. Archaeology was
successful in broadening the remit of its activities in the
western Mediterranean, and in hosting major conferences and
workshops in collaboration with the Society for Libyan Studies
and with other institutions and foreign academies in Rome.
THE ROMAN PORTS PROJECT
This project, directed by Simon Keay, is enhancing our
understanding of Portus, the port of Imperial Rome, through
excavation, survey and the analysis of finds. It also explores
Portus’s relationship to other ports across the Mediterranean.
Excavations and Survey at Portus and in its Hinterland
These were directed by Simon Keay and Graeme Earl
(Southampton), assisted by Dott.ssa Lidia Paroli
(Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici di Ostia) and
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC), the BSR, the Soprintendenza per i Beni
Archeologici di Ostia and the Universities of Southampton
and Cambridge. They drew upon the collaboration of
Parsifal Cooperativa di Archeologia (Rome), and involved
participants from the Universities of Southampton,
Cambridge, Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Aix-en-Provence, Lyon,
Tarragona and Seville. The results of all the 2008 campaigns
were presented at the second Portus Workshop, which was
held at the BSR in February 2009.
Palazzo Imperiale
Our main effort continues to be targeted upon the Palazzo
Imperiale, a key three-storey complex at the centre of the
port that overlooked both the Claudian and Trajanic basins.
Our findings are beginning to suggest that it was completed
in the last years of the reign of the Emperor Trajan (AD
22
98–117) and that it may have been conceived as a complex
that served as both a temporary residence for reigning
emperors on their way to and from Rome, and for the
imperial official (procurator) responsible for managing Portus
as a whole. Our work throughout the year also included
intensive topographical and geophysical surveys of the main
body of the Palazzo Imperiale and adjacent buildings, in
order to understand better their layout and to facilitate their
reconstruction in a virtual reality environment.
The focus of the most intensive work, however, remained
the eastern edge of the Palazzo Imperiale, where work began
in 2007. Excavations and survey took place over six weeks.
The site was visited by a number of Italian archaeologists
from the Soprintendenze of Ostia and Rome, and from the
Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, as well as colleagues from
the Universities of Cologne, Oxford, Cambridge, Aix-en-
Provence and Texas, and from the Institut Català
d’Arqueologia Clàssica and the Swedish Institute in Rome.
One key area comprised the cisterns that lay on the northern
side of the first-century AD channel that was first uncovered in
2007. These marked the eastern limit of a line of structures that
originally would have extended along the northern façade of the
Palazzo Imperiale overlooking the Claudian basin. It now seems
certain that they were constructed during the Trajanic and
Hadrianic periods, undergoing a series of important
modifications down into the late antique period. During an
initial stage at least they may have been used to provide fresh
water for ships leaving Portus on their homeward journeys.
Attention was also directed towards the south side of the
channel in order to locate its edge and learn more about the
layout of the port between it and the Trajanic basin. While
the channel still proved elusive, the excavations did uncover
the northern face of a massive rectangular building of
Trajanic date along its south side. A combination of
excavation, ground-penetrating radar, resistance
tomography and topographic survey suggest that this was
conceived as a single two- or three-storey structure, possibly
a warehouse or barrack block, that was circa 80 metres wide,