Aiano - Torraccia di Chiusi (San Gimignano, Siena): a Roman Villa in Central Italy during Late Antiquity

Cavalieri, Marco [UCL] et al.

Since 2005, the Université catholique de Louvain is working at archaeological excavations on a Roman villa located in Aiano-Torraccia di Chiusi (San Gimignano, Siena, Italy). The villa is an example of the wealthy rural residences of late-antique aristocracy in Central Italy, dating from the 4th to the 7th c. AD. In the first decades of the 5th c. AD, the residential villa was restored and the rooms were completely reorganized; during the last decades and the beginning of the 6th c. AD, some manufacturing workshop were installed inside the rooms, and the spoliation of the villa begun. One of the most important change in the complex concerned the central pavilion, that was a Six-foiled Hall until the end of the 4th c. AD; during the 5th c. AD three of the apses were closed and the central pavilion became a Trifoil Hall. The floor of the Hall was decorated with the only in situ mosaic: an opus signinum with small lithic black and white tesserae, forming geometric patterns and the image of a kantharos in the western apse. This mosaic was painted with a red color (rubricatura) in some specific zones. After this new residential phase, between the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th c. AD, all the glass and marble decorations were removed and reused, and each room was completely modified in its function: the honour route inside the complex was abandoned and workshops occupied spaces previously dedicated to a residential purpose. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the process of refunctionalization which involved an important Roman villa located in an internal area of central Etruria (Tuscany) during the 5th c. AD: at the current time it’s one of the few archaeological examples in this region.