Ciociaria, new discoveries on ancient city could change our ideas about Roman history


An ancient and little-known Roman city in Ciociaria, Interamna Lirenas, has been extensively studied in a more than 10-year project, the results of which have been published. And the new findings may even change our ideas about Roman history.

New discoveries about an ancient and little-known Roman city located in Ciociaria, Interamna Lirenas, near present-day Pignataro Interamna (and not far from Cassino), introduce important new elements about the history of the Roman Empire. Archaeologist Alexander Launaro, who published just this month the book Roma Urbanism in Italy. Recent Discoveries and New Directions, published by Oxbow Books for the University of Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology Monographs series. The volume contains the results of theInteramna Lirenas Project, a study project of the University of Cambridge conducted in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Art e Paesaggio for the Provinces of Frosinone and Latina and the Municipality of Pignataro Interamna, in partnership with the British School at Rome since 2010 and with Ghent University for the period 2015-2017. Let us see in detail what has been discovered along thirteen years of study.

The Interamna Lirenas area has always been considered by scholars to be a backward and poor area of central Italy. In fact, it turns out that the city continued to prosper until the third century A.D., in contrast to what is normally considered the general state of decline in Italy during this particularly complex historical period. It all started with the analysis of pottery found at the site and geophysical surveys that produced a surprisingly detailed picture of the entire structure of the city, showing that Interamna Lirenas had a remarkable urban development.



Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alessandro La
unaro
Alexander Launaro
Alexander Launaro

“In 2010, Professor Martin Millett and I started working on a site so unpromising that no one had ever tried to excavate it. This is very rare in Italy,” Alexander Launaro said in an article written by Tom Almeroth-Williams on the University of Cambridge website, which also states that these discoveries “change our understanding of Roman history.” “There was nothing on the surface, no visible traces of buildings, just fragments of broken pottery. But what we discovered was not an isolated place, far from it. We found a thriving city that adapted to every challenge thrown at it over 900 years. We are not saying that this city was special; it is much more exciting than that. We believe that many other average Roman cities in Italy were just as resilient. It’s just that archaeologists have only recently begun to apply the right techniques and approaches to see it.”

In fact, until recently, Almeroth-Williams explains, archaeologists tended to "focus on evidence from imported high status pottery, rather than just common pottery used for cooking. The study of pottery has progressed over the past 20 years, but Launaro’s team has made it particularly central to their investigation." Just by studying the pottery, some 40 years ago a Canadian research team had concluded that the city’s occupation peaked in the late 2nd and early 1st centuries B.C. (about 74 acres), before declining to about 25 acres by the end of the 2nd century B.C. the 1st century A.D. Now theInteramna Lirenas Project research team has been able to map the city’s development using a much larger and more reliable body of evidence, namely tens of thousands of common pottery sherds. This showed that the city actually withstood decline until the end of the third century AD, some 300 years later than previously assumed. At its peak, the city would have housed about 2,000 people. “Based on the relative lack of imported pottery, archaeologists have assumed that Interamna Lirenas was a backwater in decline,” Launaro says. We also know, from the reevaluation of an inscription found in the 19th century and now lost, that the town had received the patronage of Julius Caesar (patronage, in Roman law, was the formalized relationship between a community or city and its patronus or protector), a circumstance that is not particularly strange, but useful in shedding further light on the history of Interamna Lirenas. The city, Launaro further explains, “was strategically located between a river and a main road, and was a thriving node in the regional urban network. It would have been valuable to Julius Caesar as he sought to consolidate support throughout Italy during the civil wars.”

Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro
Interamna Lirenas. Photo: Alexander Launaro

“This city,” the scholar continues, “always played its cards well, always forging relationships with communities between Rome and southern Italy as it prospered as a commercial center.” Interamna Lirenas was endowed with at least one large warehouse (GPR surveys found a forty-by-twelve-meter structure), a temple, three bath complexes, and even a river port on the Liri River, which was certainly navigable at the time. “River ports,” Launaro adds, “didn’t just need warehouses: people spent a lot of time working and resting nearby, so they needed all kinds of services, just like the ones we found here.” The river port “allowed Interamna Lirenas to profit from trade between Aquinum and Casinum, key centers to the north, and Minturnae and the Tyrrhenian coast to the southeast. It would have been crucial to the city’s success.” At present, the forest underneath which the piers of the river port might still survive is not currently accessible and therefore cannot be excavated for now. Then, along the northwestern side of the city, archaeologists discovered the remains of a covered theater, about 45 meters by 26, large enough to hold 1,500 people. Covered theaters were quite rare in Roman Italy and were a significant improvement on outdoor structures, acoustically, architecturally and financially. The theater boasted various marbles imported from throughout the central and eastern Mediterranean. "The fact that this city opted for an indoor theater, such a fine building, would not be explained in na backward and declining area. This theater was an important status symbol. It showed the city’s wealth, power and ambition.“ Archaeologists have also found evidence of ongoing improvements to the theater, including in the architectural context of the stage. And it was precisely ”the alleged lack of a theater here,“ Launaro explained, ”that was taken as evidence of the city’s early decline. In nearby Roman cities, archaeologists saw the remains of theaters poking out of the ground. The remains of the extraordinary theater of Interamna Lirenas had been there forever, completely buried."

Further evidence of well-being are the three bath complexes: the largest of these (about 2,400 square meters), located not far from the forum, had a large pool surrounded by a portico. One inscription recounts that the portico was a gift from M. Sentius Crispinus dating back to the third to fourth centuries CE, and another inscription reveals that in 408 CE another family member, M. Sentius Redemptus, saved the same baths from “collapse” and kept them in operation with his donations. This provides important evidence that, even when the decline of Italy was in full swing, Interamna Lirenas “continued to exist as a center of some importance.”

One of the most striking aspects of the city is also the density of its occupation. 190 houses, 84 percent of the city, were small (under 500 square meters), 25 houses being in the 500-1,000 square meter range only 5 dwellings exceeded 1,000 square meters. And just like Pompeii and Herculaneum, Interamna Lirenas offers no sign of separation by social status. The team also identified nineteen sizable courtyard buildings, mostly located at a distance from the forum , which experts believe may have been covered market buildings(macella) , guild houses(scholae), apartment buildings, and public warehouses(horrea). This impressive infrastructure suggests that the city was an important commercial hub serving larger centers including Aquinum and Casinum. Archaeologists have since found a large open space (over 1 acre) southeast of the city that they say served as a sheep and cattle market. Interamna Lirenas probably played a key role in the region’s thriving wool trade.

Still, no evidence has been found onany violent destruction of the city. Launaro argues that the inhabitants probably abandoned the city amid growing insecurity, even before the Lombard invasion of the late 6th century AD, because they knew they were on a direct route that enemy armies would surely use.

Today, modern residents of Pignataro Interamna, the town closest to the site, have taken the revised history of Interamna Lirenas to heart. “This community has been inspired by this story of reinvention and resilience,” says Launaro. “They even renamed the local bar after we discovered an ancient sundial.”

Ciociaria, new discoveries on ancient city could change our ideas about Roman history
Ciociaria, new discoveries on ancient city could change our ideas about Roman history


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