Geoarchaeology confirms location of the ancient harbour basin of Ostia (Italy)

Long‐Term Interactions between the Roman City of Ostia and Its Paleomeander, Tiber Delta, Italy

“…Main archaeological findings for our purpose have been added to Figure 2 from different kinds of published data (Calza et al, 1953;Arnoldus-Huyzendveld & Paroli, 1995;Pellegrino, Olivanti, & Panariti, 1995;Heinzelmann, 2001;Bukowiecki, Dessales, & Dubouloz, 2008;Pannuzi, 2009;Goiran et al, 2014;Keay, Parcak, & Strutt, 2014). The aerial photography shows the clearest marks of the morphology of the channel of the paleomeander of Ostia just before the cutting in 1557-1562.…”

“…Paleoenvironmental data comes mainly from the littoral (Bellotti et al, 1995(Bellotti et al, , 2007C. Giraudi, 2004;Milli et al, 2013) or the lagoonal systems (Di Rita, Celant, & Magri, 2009;Bellotti et al, 2011;Carlo Giraudi, 2011;Vittori et al, 2015), or else from the harbor basins of Portus and Ostia (C. Giraudi, Tata, & Paroli, 2009;Goiran et al, 2010Goiran et al, , 2014Hadler et al, 2015), but little data available for the Tiber channel during the Holocene.…”

“…Historical and archaeological scientific literature attests that Ostia was a harbor city connecting Rome to the Mediterranean Sea and that it controlled access to the Tiber River. Recently, the location of a harbor basin has been confirmed on the left bank of the Tiber at Ostia (Heinzelmann & Martin, 2002;Goiran et al, 2014;Hadler et al, 2015), but it is small in size when compared to the basins at Portus (Keay et al, 2005;Goiran et al, 2010). Considering the recent discovery of warehouses facing both sides of the river mouth (Keay, Parcak, & Strutt, 2014), it is possible that the entire Tiber channel flowing through Ostia was a linear harbor.…”

The environs of Elaia's ancient open harbour – a reconstruction based on microfaunal evidence

“…Some investigations deal with the function and history of ancient harbour settlements in general: the harbours of Tyre, Lebanon (Marriner and Morhange, 2007;Marriner et al, 2008Marriner et al, , 2010Morhange et al, 2012), Carthage, Tunisia (Gifford et al, 1992), Pergamum (Elaia), Turkey Seeliger et al, 2013), Ephesus, Turkey (Brückner, 1997(Brückner, , 2005Stock et al, 2013), Corinth (Lechaion), Greece (Hadler et al, 2013), Marseille (Morhange et al, 2003), Rome, Italy , Ostia, Italy (Goiran et al, 2014) e to mention a few. Others describe special harbour or economy facilities like fish tanks and ship sheds in relation to the palaeo-sea level in detail.…”

Lateglacial–early Holocene vegetation history of the Tiber delta (Rome, Italy) under the influence of climate change and sea level rise

“…1b), mainly focussing on the Holocene natural and cultural history of the Tiber delta area (Di Rita et al, 2010, 2012, and on the impact of human activities on the landscape in the Roman settlements of the Tiber mouth (Bellotti et al, 2011;Pepe et al, 2013;Goiran et al, 2014).…”