The Doganella Survey Project: The Multimodal Remote Sensing Survey of a Pre-Roman Etruscan Urban Center (15 min)

Presenters

Antonio LoPiano, Duke University

Abstract

During the summer and fall of 2022 a multimodal remote sensing survey was conducted at the Etruscan urban center of Doganella in southern Tuscany, employing drone-based multispectral imaging, GPR, and resistivity sensing. This paper presents the results of that project and reviews the effectiveness of the methodology. The survey at Doganella begins to fill a significant lacuna in the archaeological record of central Italic cities, from the late-fifth to early third centuries B.C.E. Most of what is known concerning this period of urbanization in central Italy is derived from burials and sanctuaries. The general lack of evidence from urban centers themselves makes it difficult to assess the nature of urban development of this pivotal period prior to Roman regional control. Rome and its colonies continue to dominate the scholarly dialogue around the chronology and diffusion of orthogonal planning, civic structure, and monumental public spaces due to their visibility, preservation, and extensive study.

Doganella is known through field surveys to have gradually developed into a large urban center by the fourth century B.C.E. before it was abandoned in the early third century. Its chronology and lack of later Roman occupation make it a prime candidate to assess the concepts of urban planning current in central Italy previous to the spread of Roman colonies through Etruria. Indeed, the survey has discovered traces of a large-scale orthogonal street network, walls, gates, and other major urban structures. The implication of these early results is that Doganella was a major center in its own right whose planning reflected the monumentalization and regularization of Etruscan cities contemporary to those processes taking place at Rome. While reviewing these results this paper also discusses the utility of a multimodal approach to a remote-sensing survey as a methodology to efficiently target transects and overcome geomorphological particularities.

  AIA-2B