Kent-Berlin Ostia Excavations

Please click the image for a larger view.

 Key.

M3 and M4 – areas with marble slabs in situ.

Red areas – possible locations of trenches to be dug.

Grey areas – tree zones and previously uncovered areas with mosaics or cisterns.

Green areas – possible stratigraphic locations that require cleaning.

T2a – forum baths.

L –  bath toilets.

The pink room near proposed trench 2a – this is the only exterior room associated with our forum. An entrance (labelled E) was opened up in late antiquity and the old entrance opposite it was closed.

This year we are returning to expand the trenches of 2008 on the Foro della Statua Eroica. There is still a lot to dig: the eastern portico, where we hope to resolve the phasing of the walls pre-dating the complex, and the western side, where medieval walls must be dated and explored for occupation evidence. We would ideally like to clean the surface of the whole forum and carry out horizontal photography. On the paving itself, we hope to flip over a good number of spolia slabs and to try to identify the buildings which they have come from. Axel will complete a mortar survey of the whole site to reveal phasing of different eras, and with a bit of luck we will manage to get into the drains and cisterns to take environmental samples. We also hope to finish drawing sections and taking mortar samples so that our structural understanding of the complex is perfected.

A new area for 2009 will be the Palaestra of the Forum Baths. This area was opened up in late antiquity, when a wall was demolished, so that it became a supplementary plaza directly accessible from the forum of the city. It was furnished with a series of statues moved in from elsewhere, and given a series of other improvements. We hope to excavate an area focusing on the south portico, where the collapse of the vaulted roof has, it seems, preserved some late antique stratigraphy. Will this turn out to be an occupation layer? Whatever the case, the area seems to be an area with high potential for the study of public space in late antiquity.

Monuments of the Decumanus 2009

The Foro della Statua Eroica is situated on the main road E-W running through the city – the Decumanus. It is clear already that the road is the focus of substantial improvement in late antiquity, with a semi-circular shopping plaza and fountains established right next to the facade of our 4th c. public square. We hope to be able to survey some of these structures this year as part of our project, and perhaps eventually to devise a strategy for dating them. Taken together, they represent one of the most remarkable examples of street improvement in the Mediterranean basin, and are eminently worthy of record.

Luke Lavan      27/08/2009

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Foro della statua Eroica 2008

In 2008, a first season was conducted, focusing on the Foro della statua eroica, a Late Roman plaza of some 40×50m in the centre of the city. Although rapidly excavated in the first half of the 20^th c., notably under Mussolini, the plaza had never been planned in detail, and the removal of topsoil from the northern and western side revealed a well-preserved mortar surface and some areas of paving over part of the plaza. Foundation levels were also uncovered and mapped, as was a destruction layer from the western portico, and a post-antique wall built over the ruins of the portico. Selected foundation deposits were excavated to clarify stratigraphic relationships, and to recover a sample of fill. The stratigraphy of the plaza phase consisted of a mortar layer, from which re-used slabs had been set and then removed, followed by a destruction layer of tiles and some burnt material, then a layer of building rubble, followed by a new different mortar and slab surface, which had then been robbed.

Spolia analysis in the forum was able to show that the porticoes were likely to have been built at the same time, and that the street façade was decorated after 250 and perhaps during in the second phase of the forum. Survey of the walls permitted a relative sequence of the building phases of the forum and earlier structures to be established, noting especially that the earliest phase of the paving mortar overlapped an apse of the time of Constantine. Observations elsewhere in the city demonstrated that the re-used paving was typical of the 4th and 5th c. AD, and to be especially similar to that found in the early 5th c. repairs to the adjacent forum baths. Surface archaeology identified a coherent sequence of numbered masons marks across the second paving (again of a style found in the baths), showing it to have been laid in a coherent phase, despite its use of mixed stone types.

Occupation traces could be distinguished from the surface archaeology (a gameboard), and from artefacts found in the destruction layer (nummi), and in the topsoil (gaming pieces and a dice).

Archival work revealed that a decorative block from the adjacent temple of Rome and Augustus was used in the foundation layers, and that rose granite columns had decorated the street façade. It was also suggested, from some rather poorly written diaries, that a 5th c. portrait head was found in this area, as was part of an inscribed architrave, which suggested the function of this late Roman plaza: that of a macellum, restored by the urban prefect Aurelius Symmachus in 418-20. Thus, a combination of methods employed by around 12 staff over a four week period, revealed that a two porticoed square without public buildings, was established at some time after the time of Constantine, and after the first demolitions of public temples (from ca. 350 onwards), which experienced a phase of destruction, then renovation in the early 5th c. The plaza probably served as a meat and fish market, close as it is to the continuing main forum. It is remarkable as the only securely identified new large public plaza so far known in the Late Roman West.

Luke Lavan & Axel Gering 18/04/2009