This volume details an extensive programme of survey archaeology overseen by the British School at Rome in 2002–5 at the ‘lost’ urban site of Ocriculum in southernmost Umbria, c 50km north of Rome, located on the ancient via Flaminia north of the highway’s crossing of the River Tiber. Its study formed part of the Roman Towns in the Middle Tiber Valley Project (itself part of the wider Tiber Valley Project), geared to understanding the variety and trajectory of Roman urban forms in the territory. Strikingly, a number of these saw fragmented or minimal post-classical settlement and so offer scope for detailed archaeological scrutiny. Ocriculum was targeted to tease out more of its urban plan and site history; the results were to complement, or even challenge, images gathered through standing building study and excavations (the latter intermittent since the 1950s), but ultimately drawing on the major clearances of the 1770s and 1780s, when antiquarians, notably the architect Pannini (who produced invaluable elevations and plans), and the Vatican were drawn by the remains of prominent edifices to hunt (successfully) for high-quality sculptures (see Chapter 2).
This Ocriculum project is not unique, since many other ‘urban landscape’ projects have been carried out in the Mediterranean and have drawn on geophysical and georadar surveys, topographic studies, air photography, fieldwalking and targeted trenching (see especially Vermeulen et al Reference Vermeulen, Burgers, Keay and Corsi2012). These have all enabled impressive readings – without reliance on substantial years of excavation programmes – of the subsurface and surface archaeology to trace elements of town plans, suburbs and public spaces, albeit with limits in dating and understanding all features. Not all classical urban sites can be easily ‘read’, though, since not all have coherent, gridded plans. Ocriculum stands out for its irregular articulation on tufa ridges partly conditioned by the via Flaminia (whose own course is not clear: see pp 136–41). But erosion, colluviation and tree cover, plus stone robbing, combine to mask some of the archaeology from techniques such as magnetometry, requiring efforts instead by ground-penetrating radar. Chapter 3 sets out in detail the survey methods, problems and results, and duly reveals the substantial level of work undertaken here.
The fieldwalking component, discussed in Chapter 4, explored two large fields, one south of the amphitheatre and in a possible burial zone, the other on the edge of the main site and on its slopes. The 6,000 sherds broadly span the fourth century bc to the seventh century ad, with a peak from around 50bc to ad250. Surface prospection added some fragments (Chapter 5) to the corpus of sculptural and epigraphic evidence, though they hardly match the fine first-century ad Imperial statuary recovered in the eighteenth century from the ‘basilica’ (a likely Augusteum) (pp 20–4).
Chapter 6 integrates the survey results and connects these to the Pannini plans. What stands out is the early Imperial investment, with structures such as the theatre, ‘Grandi Sostruzioni’ and amphitheatre presenting ‘a magnificent frontage to those arriving at the town’ (p 146), supported by a rich range of statuary. But this was always a compact site, not one heaving with residents, but suggestive of a small body of local elites investing in a special stopping point on a major highway.
This is a nicely produced volume, with crisp photographs (but sadly with no colour) and geophysical plots and interpretative plans. Possibly the core composite images (figs 6.5–6.7) for the Republican to late Imperial town might have been fuller in speculating on the plans of forum, baths, etc, drawing in the 1780s planned structures (fig 6.1). And perhaps there was scope to debate the late antique to medieval phases – after all, there are two documented churches, San Vittore in the west (now a post-medieval edifice on the site of a Benedictine monastery) and San Fulgenzio at the east end, with epigraphic evidence for a baptistery (p 11). When did each arise, and did each persist when the castrum, probably the medieval and modern hilltop habitat of Otricoli less than 1km distant, became the new focus?
In sum, the volume works well, but should be read with other publications, especially for knowledge of excavations (oddly, for example, we hear of some excavations, such as that of an Augustan-period mausoleum, by Cenciaoli in the Foreword – one of three!). Primarily, however, Hay et al provide substantial new mapping of a challenging site and their results add many new data to debates on what was a distinctive but enigmatic centre with a rich array of early Imperial monuments.
