Archaeology, the sunken port of Cesine resumes and Vulci opens a dig on a possible sacred area

On August 30 this newspaper had reported, in a piece then declared to be of single origin, the Roman cargo identified in Lake Neuchâtel and the new finds from the Piana delle Giare. The excavation season now opening at two Italian sites makes it possible to return to the same ground with more solid documentation, and with a difference in method worth noting: here the fieldwork is announced as it takes place, not afterward.

Le Cesine: the port beneath the sea and the laboratory in the castle. Investigations into the sunken Roman port at San Giovanni, within the Le Cesine State Nature Reserve, resumed on Monday, September 7, 2026, with teams working both on the shoreline and underwater. The novelty of the campaign is not underwater but inland: the Castle of Acaya will host a new laboratory where finds from the excavations will be stored, catalogued and restored. This is reported by New Media European Press based on communications from the Lecce Library and Museum Center and the promoting bodies.

The choice has a practical consequence well known to those in the field: an underwater site without a nearby facility for initial conservation produces materials that must be transported elsewhere, with greater time and risk involved. The laboratory will also be the center of a territorial outreach plan curated by the Underwater Archaeology Group together with the Lecce Library and Museum Center, including guided tours, public open days and activities with schools.

In the same month, further north, in the Polesine area, three archaeological missions are underway led by the universities of Padua, Ca’ Foscari Venice and Sapienza, with public open dig days on September 17 and 24 at Villamarzana (Archeologia Voci dal Passato).

Vulci: eleven universities and a forty-year-old hypothesis. The research program of the Vulci archaeological park, promoted by the Superintendency and the Vulci Foundation, opens in September a new excavation site in an area that, based on digs conducted in the late 1970s, could be linked to a sacred zone. The project involves the University of Naples Federico II, research groups from Mainz and Freiburg, and a team from University College London: the international composition is the distinctive feature of a campaign that Etruscan Times describes as organized across seven digs and eleven universities.

The burial ground of Poggio delle Urne resumes activity in October, with the University of Trier: it is the oldest necropolis in the Vulci area, dating to the Villanovan and Orientalizing phases, and the tombs identified so far number 320.

Not the entire program is going ahead. The underwater archaeology investigations planned will not take place this season, as Carlo Casi clarified:

“They will not take place this year, but they remain an important part of the program” — Carlo Casi

What we don’t know. Neither campaign has so far produced published results: there are no announced finds, no datings, and no description of the presumed sacred area at Vulci beyond the hypothesis inherited from the late-1970s excavations. The information available comes from the institutions conducting the excavations themselves, that is, from parties with a stake in the outcome: a limitation worth keeping in mind until the data are published.

The next verifiable dates are those in the Polesine area: on September 17 and 24 the Villamarzana digs will be open to the public.