Archaeologists Found the Remains of an Ancient Roman Arts District Buried Underground

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Archaeologists working in the ancient Roman city of Suasa discovered a “main street” full of pottery and coin production.
The research team said that the find includes an “extraordinary quantity of coins” alongside nearly intact vases.
Researchers are calling the impressively large area a “production district.”

The ancient Roman city of Suasa may have contained one of Italy’s first—and largest—arts districts. Archaeologists uncovered what they deem a “large production district” that spanned a main street just outside the city center and featured buildings once used for the creation of coins and pottery dipping 16 feet into the ground.

The team from the University of Bologna said in a translated statement that they discovered an “extraordinary quantity of coins and some nearly intact vases” among the excavated ruins, showing off the prominence of the district in an array of production mediums that may have been traded throughout the Roman Empire.

Suasa, which was located near the Cesano River, was founded after the Battle of Sentinum in 295 B.C.—a conflict fought between the Roman army and the Picentes against the alliance of Etruscans, Samnites, Senones Gauls, and Umbrians. The Roman victory gave the empire control over central Italy, and Suasa became an administrative center that grew in importance thanks to the well-connected Via Flaminia and Via Salaria Gallica roads passing through.

The rapid growth of Suasa continued into the second half of the first century B.C. The city remained linked to Rome, but with an autonomous government and magistrates that led the building of the city, which included a variety of monumental structures.

In the ancient city center, past University of Bologna archaeological missions uncovered a mixture of finds, including a commercial forum, a square, a portico, and a mid-Imperial period Domus—an upper-class Roman residence—full of mosaics and wall paintings. Teams then found an amphitheater, considered the largest in the region, and another theater nearby. As work continued, archaeologists at the western world’s oldest continuous university located a necropolis.

“The goal of this year’s research was to investigate the city’s boundaries to better understand the transition between the settlement and the necropolis,” Enrico Giorgi, professor in the Department of History, Cultures, and Civilizations at the University of Bologna and director of the archaeological mission, said in a statement.

At the outermost area of that site—between the main settlement and the burial site—the most recent excavations revealed the “large production district.” The research team began with drone photography and geophysical surveys before moving into the excavation that uncovered the structures, coins, and vases.

University experts said that Suasa retained its important role as an administrative and economic center in central Italy for some time, with peak development occuring during the second century A.D. Signs of decline appeared in the second half of the third century A.D., and the city was slowly emptied until completely abandoned sometime in the sixth century A.D., as newer settlements retreated to the hill country. It seems that those leaving the city didn’t take their coins and vases with them.

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