Second restoration campaign of Etruscan Necropolis of Peschiera completed

The second campaign for the restoration and enhancement of the Etruscan Necropolis of Peschiera in Tuscania has been completed after two weeks of hard work at the archaeological site.

Tomba del Dado in the Etruscan Necropolis of Peschiera, Tuscany
[Credit: Lextra News]

"The restoration intervention was very complex," comments project leader Dr. Alessandro Tizi, "but thanks to the presence of so many volunteers from all over Italy, it was possible to achieve results that are quite exceptional. For this reason, we are extremely satisfied with the 2019 campaign on various levels and in particular from a scientific standpoint.

"Between July 23 and August 3, the cleaning activities carried out in two sectors of the necropolis allowed us to identify a very large quarry area. This is a discovery of exceptional archaeological value that could, though we are only at the beginning of the study, lead us to identify the first stages of the extraction of stone material used for the main public and private buildings in the Etruscan city of Tuscania."

"The analysis of the stone will make it possible to reconstruct all the different phases of the operations for the extraction of the blocks and their processing before being transported to the town. The aim will be to confirm this hypothesis with archaeologically relevant evidence and to try and establish a date for these very complex operations."

"The second sector, on the other hand, has been cleaned to create an archaeological area that can be used by the public and has led to the recovery of certain artefacts from the Orientalizing Period ( 8th-7th centuries BC), which are of exceptional archaeological value. This discovery will lead us to the formulation of new hypotheses about the first phases of the Etruscan settlement of Tuscania and about the extremely interesting development of this necropolis, which housed the burials of the members of the aristocratic families of the city."

"The findings make it possible to affirm with certainty the importance of Tuscania in this phase of Etruscan history at the centre of a network of wide-ranging commercial exchanges in the Mediterranean basin."

Source: Lextra News [trsl. TANN August 16, 2019]