Investigating Transformations through Archaeological Records in the Heart of Tuscany. The Roman Villa at Aiano between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (4th-7th c. AD)

Cavalieri, Marco
(2020) Before/After. Transformation, Change, and Abandonment in the Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean — ISBN: [978-1-78969-599-1], p. 97-113, published

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Abstract
Since 2005 a Belgian-Italian team, supported by the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), has been managing the archaeological excavation of the Roman villa at Aiano-Torraccia di Chiusi (near Siena). The building witnesses various phases of occupation. This monumental villa longinqua in agro Volaterrae was built in the heart of Tuscany between the end of 3th and the beginning of 4th c. AD. At the end of the 5th c. AD the villa was abandoned, and during the 6th c. AD the complex was looted of a great part of its decoration: marbles and glass were recycled for the production activities implanted inside the villa. This site seems to be, not only a real ‘mine’ of reusable materials, but also a centre producing metal objects, as well as glass and gold ones, and probably pottery too. The aim of this paper is to present the transformation of the villa (after the site was abandoned and later on occupied again), according to the results of nine excavation campaigns. To achieve this goal, the archaeological record will be analysed in order to get a better understanding of the material culture on the site. After being abandoned in the 6th c. AD, the complex was occupied by a group of allochthons (not Romans) artisans who installed different kinds of workshops in the rooms in the pars urbana of the villa. Many ceramic shards (above all coarse pottery) date to this phase, but a greater variety of materials, such as lead pieces, glass fragments and droplets, beads, and differently coloured mosaic tesserae, have been recovered. Our research aims at three different goals: a) to get a better understanding of the role played by villa as a site for production activities after it was not used any longer as a dwelling site; b) to focus on the phase of transition, between the period of stable occupation and the abandonment, analysing the archaeological evidence, in order to assess the impact of desertion on the site; c) to reconstruct the transformation of the local communities in order to understand what objects were produced in the workshops, and what was the target in terms of market.
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Cavalieri, M. (2020). Investigating Transformations through Archaeological Records in the Heart of Tuscany. The Roman Villa at Aiano between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (4th-7th c. AD). In Marco Cavalieri et alii (ed.), Before/After. Transformation, Change, and Abandonment in the Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean (1st ed., p. p. 97-113). Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/223956