Recherche par auteur > Mugnai Niccolò

The large aristocratic domus on the acropolis of Populonia was built in the 2nd century BC and was destroyed by a fire around 70 BC. Occupying an area of approximately 1,800 m2, the house is among the largest in Etruria; it was first excavated by the University of Siena between 2003 and 2011 and, subsequently, starting from 2022, in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The new preliminary data show that a major reconstruction project began on the acropolis from 90-88 BC, i.e. after the end of the Social War: Populonia had become a municipium by that point and started acquiring a new urban layout. The major reconstruction projects involved the city's processional walkway and the expansion of a large terraced complex, perhaps a sanctuary, located on the top of the hill. In this same context, the domus also underwent reconstruction, but the construction site was abruptly interrupted by a fire. This traumatic event occurred following a siege suffered by Populonia, which has been traditionally attributed to Sulla, although it probably happened at a later point in time as part of the raids by corsairs across the Tyrrhenian Sea. In any case, the city never recovered from this event; in the Augustan age, Strabo reports that the acropolis was abandoned.

Recent research in the domus focuses on two areas. The first area corresponds to a triclinium overlooking the rear garden, inside which the collapsed structures of the upper floor and the roof were found. The ground floor was undergoing restoration and did not have a paved floor: here some workers' tools, hastily abandoned, were recovered; on the upper floor, different types of goods and ceramics were stored.

The second area encompasses a kitchen and other service rooms. An extraordinary series of pottery finds was discovered here in situ, as well as numerous iron elements of furniture and carpentry, fireplace and kitchen tools, hooks and handles, door and furniture decorations, etc.: this rich repertoire provides a glance of daily life in the domus, including all those domestic activities that took place in the innermost rooms.

Given the specificity of this context and its preservation, a range of integrated laboratory analyses have been planned, which will provide information for an anthropological reading of domestic spaces:

- archaeometric analyses of pottery, including physical and chemical as well as organic residues analyses of amphorae, cooking, storage, and table wares.

- experimental archaeology to reproduce the production processes of cooking ware, with the aim of reconstructing the preparation and consumption of food in antiquity.

- archaeobotany and archaeozoology, which, combined with other analyses, can help understand the eating habits of the house inhabitants.

- 3D scanning of the finds and virtual reconstruction of the rooms of the house during their last phase of life.

The results and reconstructions obtained so far will be presented for the first time at the CIAC 2024 conference in Paris.