Digging Maxentius in 2003

Remains of the Villa of Maxentius.

In July of 2003, Professor Diane Conlin and her team of archaeologists began their archaeological project at the Villa of Maxentius, one component of a monumental imperial complex located on the Via Appia, approximately 3 km. outside the Porta San Sebastiano in the Aurelian Wall of Rome. The project is a unique archaeological collaboration between the University of Colorado at Boulder and Kalamazoo College, a small private liberal arts college with a leading reputation for undergraduate foreign study, and the Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali del Comune di Roma (“the Comune”), the Italian superintendency that has since 1943 conducted a systematic campaign to preserve from development this zone of special historical and archaeological importance along the ancient Appian Way. In summer 2003, the dig was supported by a generous grant from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, internal funds and administrative support from the two sponsoring American institutions, fees from student participants, and donations from private individuals, including the many of you who responded generously to an appeal from former Classics Chair Peter Knox last spring. Thanks to this support, the team successfully completed a one-month preliminary survey season at the Villa of Maxentius in July 2003.

Diane Conlin, Rachel Kahn, Holly Scripter, and Noel Lenski (left to right) on the roof of the tomb of Romulus with the remains of the Villa of Maxentius in the background.

The focus of investigations is the villa proper, which apparently constituted the living quarters and remains the least understood section of the complex. The villa surmounted a majestic concrete terrace that overlooked the circus and tomb. The concession also includes an intriguing and largely unexcavated triangular field that extends between the façade of the villa and its adjacent tomb and circus. The villa block had been allowed to return to nature, with the result that decades of invasive vegetation now threaten its architectural stability and effectively render one-third of the Maxentian complex inaccessible to both researchers and the public.

Last summer, the survey team consisted of the three co-directors Prof. Diane Conlin of Classics and Art and Art History at CU Boulder, Prof. Anne Haeckl of Classics at Kalamazoo College, and Dr. Gianni Ponti, Geoffrey Compton (project technical manager), Prof. Noel Lenski (project historian and numismatist), and five student assistants from Colorado, Kalamazoo and Bryn Mawr College. CU Classics graduate students Rachel Kahn and Holly Scripter participated in this first survey season. Fieldwork in 2003 concentrated on the large deforested sector of the Villa of Maxentius that encompassed the great apsidal audience hall (or aula), its vestibule, and a communicating section of cryptoporticus that had been consolidated in 1965.

Due to a regrettable but not uncommon paperwork processing delay, the first full-scale excavation season has been postponed to the summer of 2005. In late June of 2005, three large excavation trenches will be opened; two in the apsidal hall and one in the unexcavated sector of the palace to the east of the aula. Two areas of the apsidal hall hold particular interest for attempts to establish an occupational history of the building and to bring the old trenches into phase with a complete, well-documented stratigraphic sequence for the aula. Progressive deforestation of the site by the Comune in 2004 - 2005 will also permit two trenches to be opened in the unexplored sector to the east of the apsidal hall, which appears as an “empty quarter” on published plans.

In conjunction with the research project, Professors Conlin and Haeckl are developing a student field school to train American students in the survey, excavation and analysis of a major classical site. Field school instruction is organized around two intertwined courses, a practicum and a seminar. The practicum allows students to learn first-hand the methods and strategies of archaeological fieldwork at a classical site both in the trenches and in the artifact processing facilities. The seminar offers a chance to discuss larger issues related to understanding the site: the political environment of early fourth century Rome; the developments of late Roman architecture, sculpture, mosaics and ceramics; the topography of the Via Appia, and the characteristics of early and late Roman villa design. New evidence should also lead to a better understanding of key developments in late Roman architecture, such as the sudden vogue for including circuses and mausolea in Tetrarchic palaces and villas.