Surveyen in de as: een unieke veldverkenning op Timpone delle Fave (Zuid-Italië)

Samenvatting

Surveying through the ashes: a unique fieldwalking survey at Timpone delle Fave (Southern Italy)

Since the year 2000, the proto-historic site of Timpone delle Fave (Calabria) has been investigated within the framework of the Groningen Raganello Archaeological Project. Even though it is normally covered with dense vegetation, until recently the site had only been investigated through fieldwalking surveys. During the fieldwork campaign of 2021, a unique opportunity presented itself when a natural fire cleared the entire hilltop of vegetation. In the following days, a large part of the hilltop was systematically surveyed. This yielded remarkable new results; occupation appeared to be spread over a much larger area than originally thought, and several new phases were recognized. These new insights add to our knowledge of the site, but also point to biases caused by visibility and landuse. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of the survey and briefly consider the implications of how these unique circumstances caused different results compared to earlier surveys.