Three excavations rewrite Italian archaeology: Akragas, Pompeii, Aquinum

On the Montana houses plateau, within the Archaeological Park of the Valley of the Temples of Agrigento, the third excavation campaign by the University of Milan has brought to light monumental walls and buildings destroyed in 406 BC during the Carthaginian siege of ancient Akragas. Archaeologists have also identified ancient hydraulic channels and reconstructed the history of an underground chamber at the site (AgrigentoNotizie).

The campaign, directed by Professor Claudia Lambrugo and Park archaeologist Maria Concetta Parello, will conclude on October 24. The activities are part of a five-year research project launched under an agreement signed in 2024 between the Park, the University and the Fondo Ambiente Italiano.

At Pompeii, new non-invasive geophysical surveys have revealed that the remains of the so-called “Cicero’s villa” — excavated in the eighteenth century and later reburied — are more extensive than previously hypothesized. The villa’s rooms yielded some of the most celebrated frescoes and mosaics housed at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, although the attribution of the building to the famous Roman orator is not certain (Parco Archeologico di Pompei).

The non-invasive method used at Pompeii — based on geophysical surveys that require no digging — makes it possible to estimate the extent of structures still buried without physically intervening on the ground, a technique that is spreading across major Italian archaeological sites.

At Aquinum, in Lazio, the eighteenth excavation campaign by the University of Salento has brought to light a decorated boundary stone and a marble votive altar. A new fragment of the altar has made it possible to reconstruct part of an inscription previously known only incompletely, revealing the deities to whom it was dedicated: the Genius of Augustus, the Lares of Augustus and the Genius of the Colony (SiViaggia).

The three discoveries, although concerning different eras and contexts — a Greek-Sicilian city destroyed in war, a villa from the imperial Roman age, a sanctuary of a Roman colony — share the same moment of publication and the same approach: multi-year excavation campaigns conducted by Italian universities in collaboration with the heritage authorities of their respective territories.