Göttingen archaeology team uncovers representative room - colonnaded courtyards with fountains
For more than 20 years, archaeologists from the University of Göttingen have been researching how people lived and traded in Sicily in the past. Now they have made another important discovery: In the province of Catania, they excavated the remains of a Roman house with a mosaic floor from the 2nd to 4th century AD. The house was located almost 500 meters above sea level near the town of Vizzini on the south-eastern tip of Sicily and was part of an entire Roman village.
The Göttingen team, led by Johannes Bergemann from the Institute of Archaeology, has been conducting research here since 2022. Initially, the entire area around Vizzini was searched for possible ancient sites. Following investigations on the surface of the identified sites, a geophysical survey was carried out in 2023. This involved detecting anomalies in the earth’s geomagnetic field and creating detailed images of the subsurface without having to dig.
These geophysical measurements led the research team to the remains of the building that have now been excavated. The building measured 30 by 13 meters; its remains lie only slightly below the current surface. It contains a representative room with a floor area of almost 100 square meters, the floor of which was covered with mosaics. Unfortunately, parts of the mosaic were destroyed when the land was plowed," reports Bergemann.
The geophysical measurements also revealed that there were other, partly similar buildings in the surrounding area. "People lived there between the 2nd and around the 6th century AD on a high level: there were columns built of round bricks, covered with stucco and probably painted - similar to those in Pompeii," says Bergemann. "We found the remains of fountains with marble basins as well as Roman luxury ceramics known as terra sigillata."
It is apparently a Roman village with an area of around 15 hectares. The earlier Greek towns were replaced by a new settlement system in Roman times: Large rural settlements and villas, Roman agricultural production sites, which not infrequently generated large yields. This was made possible by long-distance trade in the globalized world of the Roman Empire. To this end, numerous small staging posts were built along the southern coast of Sicily. This new settlement system, which was connected to the interior by long-distance roads, only existed for a few centuries. The house we discovered near Vizzini is an important testimony to this era," says Bergemann.
The archaeology team will present its findings for the first time on October 16, 2024 in Vizzini Town Hall. At the University of Göttingen, Bergemann and other members of the research team will present their findings on February 3, 2025 as part of the public archaeological lecture series in the Old Auditorium.
