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The Temple of Juno at Gabii

OVERVIEW OF THE GABII PROJECT

The Gabii Project 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 10th century BC until its decline in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Amazingly, in subsequent centuries the site of Gabii was never developed or even substantially occupied, nor has the urban area ever been excavated to any significant degree. As such, the site provides a unique opportunity to study the development and structure of Archaic urban planning in Central Italy, both monumental and civic architecture, domestic space, and all other corollary studies. Since Gabii eventually became a part of the Roman Empire – first as a member of the Latin League and later as a town with municipal status, numerous important intersections exist between Gabii and Rome. The Gabii Project seeks not only to explore and understand the archaeology of the city of Gabii but also to situate and contextualize our understanding of Gabii in the wider orbits of Central Italy and the Roman Empire. It is also important to achieve a better understanding of the urban development of Gabii herself and the relationship that existed among the cities of Latium in antiquity.

The Gabii Project is an international, multi-institution archaeological initiative under the direction of Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan. Field research at the site of Gabii commenced in 2007 with a campaign of magnetometric geophysical survey, undertaken in order to begin to establish an archaeological plan of the site - something that had never been done before - and to assess the nature of archaeological deposits and determine whether or not urban excavation at the site would be a workable research approach. Encouraged by the 2007 results, the project returned in 2008 to complete the magnetometry survey of the site - undertaken together with Stephen Kay and the survey unit attached to the British School at Rome - and to carry out various other geophysical prospections in order to construct stratigraphic site profiles for Gabii. With the data in hand from 2007 and 2008, a fairly complete plan for a substantial part of the urban area is now in hand and will serve as a useful guide for excavations that will commence in 2009.

The Site of Ancient Gabii

2008 Magnetometry Survey being carried out by members of the BSR and APSS

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The Gabii Project has several research objectives. These are:

to explore and better understand the phases of urbanism at Gabii and the pace at which they occurred.
to explore through excavation the preserved remains of an important city-state of the first millennium BC.
to search for evidence of important public and sacred structures in the center of the ancient city.
to better contextualize the ancient city of Gabii and its relationships with other political entities and communities in Central Italy.
to apply the latest methods and techniques of scientific archaeology to this important site.
to provide a means to better inform the public - both locally and globally - about urbanism, state formation, and city life in the ancient world.
to facilitate the training of students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in the most current methodologies of field archaeology.

2008 Core Sample

THE GABII PROJECT ON THE WEB

The weblog of the Project can be found at: http://lapisgabinus.blogspot.com while the Project’s photostream can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/gabii_project.

Site design by J. Matthew Harrington

last updated: October 31, 2009

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