A Changing Cityscape in Central Italy: The Gabii Project Excavations, 2012–2018

Abstract

Excavations carried out at the Latin city of Gabii between 2012 and 2019 have contributed new data to a number of debates around the emergence, lived experience, maintenance, decline, and resilience of cities. Gabii's urban trajectories demonstrate both seemingly familiar forms of urbanism and, on closer study, many locally circumscribed elements. Specifically, the Gabii Project excavations have uncovered an early Iron Age (8th-5th centuries B.C.) hut complex that has provided evidence for architecture, funerary rites, and quotidian activities during the initial polynuclear settlement at urbanizing Gabii. A unique monumental complex constructed in the 3rd century B.C. has been identified and is interpreted as a public structure potentially used for ritual activities; the study of this complex raises questions about the creation and reception of markers of civic identity. Excavation data has further characterized the reorganizations that took place during the first centuries A.D., when Gabii's settled area contracted. Rather than unidirectional decline, evidence for industrial activities increases, and elite investments in the city persist, especially in the mixed-use elite domestic and agricultural complex. These results provide detailed evidence for how ancient cities developed and transformed in the face of shifting local and regional conditions, especially smaller urban centers (Gabii) at the periphery of mega-urban centers (Rome).

Reimagining urban success: rhythms of activity at Gabii, 800 BC–AD 600

“…Excavations and intramural survey at Gabii provide a view of the slow transformation and consolidation along the main road (Guaitoli 1981;Samuels et al 2021). Structures along this thoroughfare assumed a clear commercial character.…”

“…The new system profoundly altered the dynamics of Gabii's community, which nonetheless adapted successfully and found expression within the region's new form. This cycle of transformation and reorientation continued until at least the tenth century AD, when the remnants of Gabii's urban past were converted to agricultural use (Samuels et al 2021).…”

“…Beyond architecture, large dumps of imported African cooking wares recovered from within the structure suggest the persistence of connections to regional and Mediterranean-wide commerce, probably mediated through Rome. Contemporaneously, the consumption of imported goods occurred alongside a new production strategy, as evidenced by the construction of a press (likely for wine) connected to several large tanks (Samuels et al 2021). The introduction of agricultural facilities into the domestic environment echoes the configuration of a villa-the quintessential, upper-class residential unit of rural and suburban Roman contexts.…”

“…Gabii, a central Italian polity that emerged chronologically and geographically alongside Rome (Figure 1), is presented in ancient literary sources as a canonical example of urban decline, and both implicitly and explicitly portrayed as a failure when compared with Rome (Becker et al 2009). Intentionally stepping outside of this model, we use a 'rhythmic' approach (Lefebvre 2004) to interpret the material record uncovered by a decade of archaeological excavations at Gabii (Mogetta & Becker 2014;Fabbri & Musco 2016;Samuels et al 2021; for preliminary data from the Gabii Project, see https://gabii.cast.uark.edu/data). In this, we problematise linear models that assume a connection between growth in settlement extent and urban success, and between reduction in size and urban failure.…”

“…Between the fifth and first centuries BC, the rhythms of life at Gabii changed and the city moved away from its earlier dispersed character. Following the development of a street grid, Gabii's city centre slowly developed-for a time-a densely built character, full of houses, monumental buildings and public infrastructure (Mogetta et al 2019;Samuels et al 2021). This period saw shifting activities at various scales, from the regional to the local; yet these changes were gradual and ultimately not sustained.…”