An international team of archaeologists led by the University of South Florida is the first to successfully excavate the 5,000 m2 Roman villa of Durrueli in Italy.
The Roman villa of Durrueli is located off the southern coast of Sicily. Image credit: University of South Florida.
The Roman villa of Durrueli at Realmonte, located off the southern coast of Sicily, was discovered in 1907 during construction works for a local railway line.
The early excavations revealed baths, beautiful ornamental mosaics, opus sectile (type of mosaic work), and a peristyle garden with a semicircular fountain with marble.
Parts of the villa were uncovered in 1979-1985 by a team of Japanese archaeologists led by University of Tsukuba Professor Masanori Aoyagi.
Mosaic floors at the Roman villa of Durrueli. Image credit: VirtualSicily.it.
The new excavations, led by Dr. Davide Tanasi, project director and assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of South Florida, uncovered walls, floor levels, staircase and water channel.
The archaeologists also found cookware and lamps along with a large quantity of African Late Roman pottery and related materials such as kiln spacers.
Dr. Tanasi leads a team of archaeologists in uncovering the ancient villa. Image credit: University of South Florida.
“An important function of the village was to produce pottery, bricks and tiles in industrial scale, helping explain the economic history of Late Antique Sicily,” they explained.
The researchers determined that the villa was consistently occupied between the 2nd and 7th century CE and reconfigured to settlement in the 5th century CE.
They also created terrestrial and aerial 3D scanning of the entire villa, an invaluable tool in guiding the excavation and interpreting the villa’s architectural phases.
