Falerii, Località Vignale, La ripresa delle indagini in un settore stratefico della città antica

The importance of ancient Falerii in the panorama of pre-Roman Italy is well known and is to a large extent due to the intensity of the field research carried out on the site over the last 150 years. Following in-depth research on the sacred areas and the necropoleis, in recent years the focus has shifted to the inhabited area, which was laid out on the two hills of Civita Castellana, characterised by a substantial continuity of habitation from the Middle Ages to the present day, and of Vignale, used almost exclusively for agricultural purposes during the same time period. Today Vignale, which stretches over 14 hectares, is almost entirely free of buildings and therefore presents an enviable case study. For this reason, a new research project was launched in 2019 as part of the broader project Giving Voice to a pre-Roman City: Falerii. This new research package aims to resume archaeological investigation on the hill in order to understand the layout of this large sector of the pre-Roman city. This paper presents the research path that has been carried out to date: this includes the re-examination and systematisation of both the published and unpublished existing documents/materials, as well as the results of the most recent fieldwork (multispectral and thermal drone flights, a GPR campaign and a fieldwalking survey). Interestingly, the analysis has highlighted the fact that the use of the plateau was quite diversified. The area appears to have been divided into an eastern portion which, as was previously known, housed one of the main sacred areas of the city and a western portion in which, at least according to the data available, an area used for residential purposes was most likely located. It can be hypothesised that habitation of this sector of the site extended from the Middle Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period, with later phases of used (early Imperial and post-antique), albeit with a particular concentration in the Archaic period. The possibility that the site was abandoned temporarily in the Early Iron Age must be corroborated through fieldwork and an initial excavation campaign to test this hypothesis has now been confirmed for June 2022.