New Perspective from Recent Archaeological Fieldwork

Luni has become a well-known case in Roman Urbanism studies since the 1970s and in a long perspective, starting from the founding of the colony in 177 BC, up to the definitive deconstruction of the Roman townscape in the 6th century AD. In more recent years, the city and its suburbium have been the subject of excavations and research , together with an important geoarchaeological project that has outlined a new framework of the Luni’s geomorphology in relation to the location and organization of its harbour system. Started in 2014, our project focuses on the southern quarter of the city, immediately to the east of the Cardo Maximus and near the southern walls and Porta a Mare (Sea Gate). This area, which has never been investigated by archaeologists, is providing significant information about the urban organization in a peripheral sector near the harbour system. Here we bought to light 2 domus - both of them built in the 1st century BC and facing the Cardo Maximus - which subsequently underwent a great deal of reconstruction: a small temple in the 1st century AD, a workshop for washing fabrics in the 5th century AD; housing in the Byzantine period. The results of our excavations find close comparisons with the previous research about Luni and therefore allow us to consider some aspects with greater attention and, at the same time, with a wider vision: now we can deepen our knowledge about the urbanism of the entire city, and its economic and social aspects also related to its territory, rich in agro-pastoral resources and for the exploitation of the Apuanian Marble Quarries. In this paper, we will examine, in greater detail, the relationships between the excavation area, the Forum and the Porta Marina area and their evolution over time between the mid 2ndcentury BC and the early 8th century AD. The transformations of the structures identified by the excavation in an area never previously investigated in fact constitute a new and important interpretative sequence of Luni’s urbanism from the Republican Age to Late Antiquity.