Solunto 2024-2025: scavi e ricerche nell’area urbana

Abstract

Abstract · Solunto 2024-2025: Excavations and research in the urban area · The stratigraphic research carried out in the last two years addressed several points of the sanctuary area W of the theatre and the Baths NE of the agora. In the sanctuary, several sondages (2024, 2025), in addition to clarifying the organisation of the central area between the Two-cellae temple and the theatre, for the first time tackled the definition of the southernmost part up to the so-called Via del Teatro. The Building with two staircases was surveyed, which resulted to have no relation to the service building above it to the SW. It is a monumental hypaethral building of a sacred destination, with a fine façade surmounted by a narrow terrace with reduced accessibility and a front courtyard; it shares with the Twoaisles temple one of the terraces in the southern part of the sanctuary, overlooking a huge open space (the N-S section of the “Via del Teatro”). Inside the latter, cleaning and investigation of small surviving strips of stratigraphy have revealed several sacrificial stones and some remains of a large altar anchored to the E terrace wall: this part of the sanctuary is therefore an extensive sacrificial area for blood-stained rituals. In the sector above the theatre, the lower part of the staircase in front of the Two-cellae temple has come to light, which transpired to belong to the temple façade itself. A unified temple-theatre composition thus emerges more clearly, with an intermediate terrace in front of the temple steps that should have hosted ritual actions performed before/on a probable Π-shaped altar. A small room/aedicula leaning against the S wall of the temple’s staircase, which came to light this year, attests to the continuity of the sanctuary until the 3rd century AD. The investigation of the southern part of the intermediate terrace and the sondages at the two main temples and in the SW building have made it possible to better define the development of the sanctuary in the four main building phases identified. Finally, research at the North Baths (2024) has provided important information on the most ancient phases of the area, as well as on the functioning of the bath complex from the late Republican period. The new data from the area to the South, where a building of probable public character stood, provide useful element for the vexata quaestio of the chronology of the city’s urban layout. All of the buildings investigated, together with a significant sampling of the city’s domestic architecture, have been surveyed and integrated into the Topographical Atlas of Monuments, which is currently being implemented