Tra Caere e il mare: scavi e ricerche nel comprensorio di Pyrgi (campagne 2021-2023)

The 2021-2023 excavation campaigns have provided more information about Pyrgi’s overall urban asset, focussing the relation between the sacred district, the settlement area and the harbour. In the settlement area, fieldwork has mainly addressed the Ceremonial Quarter at the intersection between the urban track of the Caere-Pyrgi road and a pebbled road leading to the oriental port-basin. This includes public buildings that have played representative, political and economic functions from the middle 6th century BC at least. Excavation has confirmed the performance of metallurgic activities and connected ritual acts in the plot N of the pebbled road, as already shown by the metal offerings focussing the gray tuff container included in room A; noteworthy is the recovery of two leaden counterpoise weights of lever scales. The building complex S of the pebbled road has certainly played a public function, as highlighted by the decorated roofs and the many ritual acts associated with any building intervention; its peculiar late-archaic plan matches the model of the transversal porticoed houses- well documented by Caeretan funerary architecture, and the atrium houses. Excavation is outlining the archaic asset of the building, also documented by the recovery of architectural terracottas; extremely interesting is a huge polycrome mud-brick basementmaybe connected with some ritual structure, that falls in the underground of the portico. In general, the ritual deposition of local and imported amphoras and of stone anchors, together with the offering of phoenician lamps, well highlights the attendance of the building by (foreign) merchants and the strict connection with the commercial sphere. As far as the Monumental Sanctuary, the excavation area now includes not only the entrance area but also a wide strip along temple A and its frontal terrace. Fieldwork has definitively confirmed the presence of a road that stems from the Caere-Pyrgi track and runs parallel with Temple A, marking the limit of the Sanctuary to the N in spite of the lack of evidence of a proper témenos wall. Another important new acquisition is the evidence of a dry masonry rectangular archaic building-maybe a shrine, that was intercepted by Temple’s foundation cut, whereas the recovery of a ashlar masonry base included in the frontal terrace provides further information about the location of altars or donations in the sacred area. As regards the overall asset of the maritime settlements, important new data have been gathered through the documentation and collection of pottery shards from the houses that are being dismantled by the sea erosion and through the underwater survey performed in 2023 in front of the excavation areas.