The Astura and Nettuno surveys of the Pontine Region Project (2003 - 2005), 2nd and final report

Abstract

Between 2003 and 2005, a team from the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (GIA) of the University of Groningen conducted systematic field surveys in the lower Astura valley and in the surroundings of present-day Nettuno. Nettuno is located on the Tyrrhenian seaboard, approximately 50 km south of Rome (southern Lazio). The surveys are part of the GIA's Pontine Region Project (PRP), a landscape-archaeological project studying the long-term settlement and land-use patterns in the Pontine coastal plain and Lepine mountains. The Astura and Nettuno surveys have yielded valuable data on prehistoric to Roman presence in an area that currently is under high pressure of urbanization and agricultural land improvement; these are rapidly wiping out what still remains of a formerly rich archaeological record.

The field surveys consisted of systematic block surveys and revisits to sites that had been mapped previously by the Italian archaeologist F. Piccarreta and the director of the local museum, A. Liboni.

This report presents the results of both the block surveys and the revisits of 2004 and 2005, which concentrated on the areas of Campana and Quarto delle Cinfonare. All sites and related artefacts are presented in the appendix (also published online), while in the article we evaluate the most important results of the surveys for each period.