Civitavecchia (Roma), loc. Scarti di S. Antonio. Esplorazione preliminare di un nuovo contesto sacro

In 1999 some fragments of architectural decorations, found by a private citizen in the locality of Scarti di Sant’Antonio (Civitavecchia, Rome), were presented to the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Etruria Meridionale by the Guardia di Finanza. In 2003 an investigation of the area in which the fragments were discovered was possible thanks to the project “Grandi Santuari”. This paper is the report of this field campaign: both the excavation and the findings are discussed. The chronological sequence clearly speaks of a continuous use of the S. Antonio area from at least the Archaic period onward. Particular attention is paid in the paper to the architectural fragments, whose discovery revealed the presence in the Civitavecchia area of an up-to-now unknown sacred building that can be dated to the Hellenistic period and was decorated with terracottas possibly representing the episode of the hunt of the Calydonian boar. The area was then occupied by a Roman villa, whose installation is connected to the reorganization of the whole hill with a complex arrangement of terraces and that must be read in connection with the complex process of “Romanization” of the southern Etruscan coastal area.