At the Roots of Roman Urbanism: The Gabii Project

FAIN: RZ-249792-16

Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1015)
Nicola Terrenato (Project Director: December 2015 to present)

Archaeological excavation and analysis at the ancient city site of Gabii, near Rome. See website at https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/gabiiproject/.

The Gabii Project is in the process of making a very significant difference to our understanding of the origins of Roman urbanism. It revolves around a decade-long, large-scale excavation of a unique major center, the Latin city of Gabii. Since the city was almost completely abandoned by the 1st century BCE, it offers unparalleled access to those Mid-Republican, Archaic and Iron Age levels that have proven so elusive elsewhere. Seven campaigns of excavation have so far already produced key advances in our knowledge. This complex stratigraphic context is being recorded with innovative 3D digital techniques, directly geared to a new kind of peer-reviewed online publication of the excavation results. Continuing and extending this excavation would allow the discovery of another major Mid-Republican public area of the city and the complete investigation of an Iron Age elite compound, throwing more crucial light on the formation process of Roman cities.

Associated Products

Gabii Project (Web Resource)
Title: Gabii Project
Author: Nic Terrenato
Abstract: The Gabii Project is an international archaeological initiative under the direction of Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan. It was launched in 2007 with the objective of studying and excavating the ancient Latin city of Gabii, a city-state that was both a neighbor of, and a rival to, Rome in the first millennium BC. Located in the region of Italy once known as Latium, the site of Gabii was occupied since at least the tenth century BC until its decline in the second and third centuries AD
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/gabiiproject/

A Mid-Republican House from Gabii (Book)
Title: A Mid-Republican House from Gabii
Editor: Nicola Terrenato
Editor: Marcello Mogetta
Editor: Rachel Opitz
Abstract: Since 2009 the Gabii Project, an international archaeological initiative led by Nicola Terrenato and the University of Michigan, has been investigating the ancient Latin town of Gabii, which was both a neighbor of, and a rival to, Rome in the first millennium BC. The trajectory of Gabii, from an Iron Age settlement to a flourishing mid-Republican town to an Imperial agglomeration widely thought to be in decline, provides a new perspective on the dynamics of settlement in central Italy. This publication focuses on the construction, inhabitation, and repurposing of a private home at Gabii, built in the mid-Republican period. The remains of the house provide new information on the architecture and organization of domestic space in this period, adding to a limited corpus of well-dated examples. Importantly, the house's micro-history sheds light on the tensions between private and public development at Gabii as the town grew and reorganized itself in the mid- to late- Republican period transition. Published in digital form as a website backed up by a detailed database, the publication provides a synthesis of the excavation results linked to the relevant spatial, descriptive, and quantitative data.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/n009w229r
Access Model: open access
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 978-0-472-9990
Copy sent to NEH?: No

A Monumental Mid-Republican Building Complex at Gabii (Article)
Title: A Monumental Mid-Republican Building Complex at Gabii
Author: Andrew Johnston
Author: Marcello Mogetta
Author: Laura Banducci
Author: Rachel Opitz
Author: Nicola Terrenato
Abstract: Excavations at the Latin city of Gabii in 2012–15 conducted by the Gabii Project have uncovered a monumental building complex, hitherto known only very partially from previous excavations in the 1990s. Organized on a series of three artificial terraces that regularized the slope of the volcanic terrain, it measures some 60 m by 35 m, occupying an entire city-block. It is prominently situated at one of the most central locations within the city, on the main urban thoroughfare at the important intersection of the roads from Tibur, Praeneste and Rome. Stratigraphic evidence and construction techniques date the original phase of the building to the mid-third century BC. This report focuses on a contextualization and description of this first, mid-Republican phase and offers a preliminary interpretation of this complex as a public building, with spaces designed for a variety of functions: bathing, public feasting, and ritual activity. If this is correct, it now represents one of the very few examples of public buildings other than temples and fortifications known from the mid-Republican period, and sheds important light on the development of Roman architecture and of the Latin cities in a crucial and obscure period.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: http://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/papers-of-the-british-school-at-rome/article/monumental-midrepublican-building-complex-at-gabii/274515BA1BFA6F77BF8A9397DF6D1ED5
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Papers of the British School at Rome
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Elite Burial Practices and Processes of Urbanization at Gabii (Book)
Title: Elite Burial Practices and Processes of Urbanization at Gabii
Author: Marcello Mogetta
Editor: Marcello Mogetta
Abstract: Discusses the history of settlement (topography, architecture, stratigraphy) in the Early Iron Age, Orientalizing, and Archaic periods, the osteological evidence of the non-adult burials, the tombs and their rich grave-goods, all fully illustrated in colour, offerings and rituals at the grave based on the macro- and micro-organic evidence, non-adult burials from contemporary settlements in Latium Vetus, and infant burials as mediators of House identity at Iron Age Gabii, with conclusions by N. Terrenato and an Afterword by Anna De Santis.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1145822468
Access Model: Book for sale
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780999458624
Copy sent to NEH?: No

An Iron Age Settlement at Gabii: An Interim Report of the Gabii Project Excavations in Area D (Article)
Title: An Iron Age Settlement at Gabii: An Interim Report of the Gabii Project Excavations in Area D
Author: Marilyn Evans
Author: Troy Samuels
Abstract: Since 2007, the Gabii Project (hereafter GPR) has been investigating the site of ancient Gabii, a Latin city some 18 km east of Rome along the Via Prenestina. The project, begun by the University of Michigan and the Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma (SS-ABAP-RM), has operated with the main goal of examining the urban development of a major city in ancient central Italy.2 Ongoing excavations since 2009 have brought to light several phases in the development of the city from the Iron Age through the Late Antique period.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/etst/22/1-2/article-p6.xml
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Publisher: De Gruyter

New Epigraphic Evidence for Municipal Institutions at Imperial Gabii (Article)
Title: New Epigraphic Evidence for Municipal Institutions at Imperial Gabii
Author: Andrew Johnston
Abstract: Recent seasons of excavation at the site of Gabii, 20 km east of Rome in central Latium, have uncovered fragments of two important monumental public inscriptions on stone dated to the fifth century BCE. Now to be added to the epigraphic corpus of Gabii is a recently unearthed inscription from the imperial period, which sheds new light on the continued operation of public officials and municipal institutions during a pivotal era in the long history of this Latin city.
Year: 2019
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Publisher: Lega

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