Space and Place around the Sacred Pool of Bagno Grande at San Casciano Dei Bagni (Toscany, Italy)

This paper presents the discovery of an intact Etruscan and Roman votive deposit within a sacred hot pool at Bagno Grande, San Casciano dei Bagni (province of Siena, Italy). This sanctuary was in use at least from the beginning of the 3rd century BCE to the end of the 4th century CE. 25 litres of hot water (42 degrees Celsius) still flow into the sacred pool of the sanctuary every second. A series of ritual closing actions took place throughout these centuries at an institutional level, thus preserving into the hot mud the stratification of the votive deposit. Almost 7000 coins, hundreds of votive carved woods, and over 20 bronze statues and statuettes have been found. This is one of the largest votive deposits ever found in the Mediterranean and certainly the largest within a thermo-mineral spring. Due to the possibility of investigating the stratigraphy of the deposit, the interdisciplinary team working in the excavation is expanding our understanding of the complexity of a votive context. This paper investigates both this complexity and the potential of the Bagno Grande sanctuary in order to decode the system of ritual and cult actions that took place diachronically around and within the sacred pool. The paper is also focused on the multicultural and polylingual elements that characterized the transition between the Etruscans and the Romans, and how these elements were ‘cast’ into the mud within the sacred pool. Keywords: Sanctuary, thermal and mineral-medicinal waters, Etruscan and Roman votive deposit