The Castelporziano Project
Amanda Claridge,* Jari Pakkanen,* and Helen Rendell**
*Royal Holloway, University of London
**Loughborough University
Maria Giuseppina Lauro, Segretariato Presidenza della Repubblica
The ongoing project The Evolution of Rome’s Maritime Facade: Archaeology & Geomorphology at Castelporziano is investigating the history of Roman settlement along the litus Laurentinum, the territory immediately south of Ostia, legendary location of Virgil's Aeneid book VII and the Laurentine villa of Pliny the Younger. The research is based at Royal Holloway, University of London and Loughborough University, and it is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain. The visualisation project Modelling Rome’s Maritime Facade: Villa Architecture at Castelporziano carried out as part of the 3D-Bridge framework is an integral part of this larger study.
The Castelporziano Project combines archaeological, geophysical and geomorphological methods in the study of a seven-kilometre length of the ancient shoreline and its hinterland. This now lies several hundred metres inland, partly buried in a sequence of sand dunes and densely forested but otherwise uniquely preserved from modern development, within the confines of the Castelporziano/Capocotta estate. The most visible remains are those of an enormous harbour-villa belonging to the Antonine emperors and a small town called Vicus Augustanus, both probably to be associated with the adjacent imperial estate of Laurentum. Other sites include shellfish middens of the Early Iron Age, two possible fish and oyster farms of the second or first century BC and at least twelve maritime villas of differing sizes and shapes built during the first four centuries AD.
The study extends beyond the morphology of individual sites and their assemblages to such wider issues as property boundaries, regional building practices, the origins and distribution of building materials, and their despoliation and recycling during and after Roman occupation. Taking advantage of the latest developments in precision dating of sand deposits by luminescence, it is also determining the extent to which the formation of the present dune landscape was episodic and whether the eventual abandonment of settlement coincided with major climatic change.
The 3D-Bridge visualisation project will take a short stretch of the coastline under closer scrutiny and build a three-dimensional model which can be used to explore and explain the relationship between the excavated archaeological remains, the current surface features and what once stood on the site. The model will be designed in such a way that it can also show how the villa architecture may have responded to the continuing evolution of the coastline and to the environmental changes associated with this development.
