Three excavations, three continents: the autumn of Mediterranean archaeology

Three pieces of news arriving almost simultaneously trace a map spanning Etruria, Egypt and Roman Campania, and it is worth reading them together precisely because they show how contemporary archaeology proceeds on multiple fronts, with different methods and protagonists but one constant: the patient slowness of stratigraphic excavation, which continues to produce first-rate discoveries.

In Cerveteri, the ancient Etruscan city known as Cisra, the Department of Classics and Archaeology at Queen’s University has brought to light a monumental temple. The excavation is being conducted in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the province of Viterbo and for southern Etruria, a model of cooperation between foreign academic institutions and Italian heritage bodies that has characterised research at one of the world’s most studied Etruscan sites for decades. The scale of the find, described as monumental, places it among the most significant interventions carried out at the site in recent years.

Moving to Egypt, in the necropolis of Saqqara, south of the Giza plateau, the Egyptian archaeological mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities has found the tomb of Weni, a high-ranking official of Ancient Egypt. The identification was made possible by an inscription found within the tomb itself, which allowed archaeologists to reconstruct the profile of its owner. Saqqara remains one of the most productive areas for the study of pharaonic administration precisely because of the survival of burials of high-ranking officials, whose funerary inscriptions constitute direct sources on the structure of the Egyptian state.

The third piece comes from Pompeii, where the Archaeological Park has received the Palmyra Award for the best archaeological discovery of 2025. The award recognises the frescoed banquet hall depicting the procession of Dionysus, unearthed during excavations in insula 10 of Regio IX. This is not, therefore, a new find, but the institutional consecration of an excavation already known, a sign that the work carried out in Pompeii in recent years continues to be recognised as an international benchmark for the quality of documentation and conservation of the frescoes.

Lining up these three episodes helps to grasp a structural feature of current archaeological work: the combination of fieldwork, collaboration between institutions from different countries, and after-the-fact verification through awards and scientific publications. The temple at Cerveteri and the tomb of Weni are fresh discoveries, still in the process of excavation and interpretation; the recognition at Pompeii, by contrast, shows how a find already made continues to generate value over time, through study and validation by the international scientific community.

It should be noted that, for each of these three news items, the reconstruction presented here is based on a single journalistic source reporting the communications of the respective archaeological missions; it has not been possible, at this time, to find further independent confirmation for any of the three cases. The three primary sources nonetheless remain distinct: the Queen’s University mission with the Soprintendenza for Cerveteri, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities for Saqqara, and the Pompeii Archaeological Park for the Palmyra Award.

Source: Artribune