Falerii Novi: ai margini della città

Falerii Novi, ca 50 km north of Rome, in the heart of the ager Faliscus, lies on a volcanic plateau surrounded by the city-wall, well preserved along the entire perimeter. South of the city, the river gorge of the Rio Purgatorio forms a deep ravine which was exploited throughout antiquity with frequently cut tombs and subterranean rooms. Outside the city-wall the agricultural fields are suitable for archaeological research, offering an unrivalled opportunity to investigate the peri-urban landscape of a Roman town. The doctoral project “Falerii Novi: the fringes of the city” has been based on an integrative and multidisciplinary approach, involving extensive geophysical prospection, pedestrian surveys, bibliographic research and the analysis of historical photographs and archival documents. The large amount of new data collected combined with insights from prior studies led to the development of a new archaeological map for the peri-urban area of Falerii Novi. From a methodological perspective, the project has tested the effectiveness of magnetometry to detect features that are rarely investigated through excavation, but which represent key features of the peri-urban landscape such as quarries, agricultural features, and ditches. The technique has proved suitable for locating geological and geomorphological formations as well, which contributed to reconstruct the appearance of the ancient landscape surrounding Falerii Novi. The results pose Falerii Novi as a new study-case applicable for cross-site comparisons and shed new light on the study of peri-urban areas of Roman cities, a category of landscape as fascinating as it is still only partially investigated by archaeological research.