Annual Report 2008-9 - The British School at Rome

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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,
Above: White marble head from excavations at Portus Right: General view of the concentric oval walls of the Ludus at Portus ran in an east to west direction for some 250 metres and was composed of a series of parallel corridors running from north to south for its entire length. Analysis of the façade that opened on to the channel revealed that the building underwent major changes during the course of the Imperial period, culminating in the later fifth century AD, when it was incorporated into the defensive fortification (mura costantiniane) that encircled the port complex as a whole. Excavations also confirmed that during the Severan period the channel was backfilled with sand and then covered over with a large (42 metres x 35 metres) oval-plan building. This probably can be identified as a small amphitheatre (ludus). It has important implications for our understanding of the Palazzo Imperiale and adjacent buildings, given that structures of this kind are often associated with Imperial palaces at Rome, such as the early third–century AD Palazzo Sessoriano, and military complexes, such as the Castra Praetoria. A R C H A E O L O G Y In addition to this work, attention was also directed towards further understanding late Imperial levels, not least including the excavation of a series of late antique burials outside the mura costantiniane. The work on the excavation was complemented by a programme of environmental coring by J.-P. Goiran (Lyon) in an attempt to understand better the environmental context of the port: six cores of up to ten metres depth were taken at different points across the excavation and surrounding area. In addition, samples of the pine and oak were taken from cladding around the inside of the Hadrianic cistern for dendrochronological dating and sourcing work (carried out by S. Manning, Cornell University). The Trajanic Basin A team led by Justin Dix (National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton) undertook a sub-bottom sonar survey of the Trajanic basin in order to reveal the depth and profile of the basin, and its relationship with the Palazzo Imperiale. Initial 23
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Annual Report 2008-9 - The British School at Rome

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