Pisa Progetto Suburbio: l’Area Scheibler. La campagna di scavo 2020

The Area Scheibler, located in the Western outskirts of Pisa, has been the site of discoveries and rescue excavations since the 1980s. These testified to the long-lasting history of this sector of the ancient suburb – formerly crossed by the Auser river – from the Iron Age to the Early Middle Age, with a consistent Roman phase. The 2020 campaign was the first planned stratigraphic excavation to take place on this site. It was carried out in order to verify the hypothesis that a villa existed on the site and to define both the chronology and the nature of the human settlement in the area. We have thus been able to investigate a complex stratigraphic sequence: the walls and the very well-preserved floor of a farmhouse can be dated back to the Late Republican period. This building was deliberately abandoned during the early decades of the Imperial period, when a new compound with huge walls and a brick, well-developed drainage system was constructed. Between the 3rd and the 4th centuries AD more floods caused the partial destruction of the building. During the 7th century AD a new structure in perishable building materials associated withTunisian fine table ware and amphorae and soapstone cooking pots marked a new occupation of the site, which was finally destroyed by a further alluvial event.