Il Progetto Roselle 2018-2020: gli scavi sulla “Tempelterrasse”

This work proposes the first results of the excavation activities carried out in the framework of the Project devoted to the urban area of Rusellae. The Rusellae Urban Area Project takes its origin by the strict collaboration that the city of Grosseto local government, through the Archaeology and Art Museum of Maremma, the Archaeological Superintendency and the Department of History and Cultural Heritage of the University of Siena, began since 2013 in order to create a deepener link between Grosseto and its main archaeological and monumental site. An excavation in concession has therefore been organized in the years 2018-2020, with the aim of widening the monumental heritage and of improving the criteria to visit the site. At the same time, the massive bulk of unpublished data, recovered from regular excavations carried out at Rusellae after the Second World War, are still waiting a reasoned edition plan, that will help the interpretation of the different periods (Protohistoric, Etruscan, Roman and Medieval) of occupation of the site. New diggings have been promoted in 2018 on the so-called Tempelterrasse, a site placed on the southern hill of the city. The Tempelterrasse has been so named by the existance of massive terracing walls, supporting the upper plateau of the hill, highlighted by the research campaigns conducted by the German Archaeological Institute in 1957-1958. These walls were reputed to retain the area of a sanctuary, whose possible presence had been supposed by the discovering of abundant Late-Archaic and Hellenistic architectural terracottas, recovered in the filling of the rooms composing the retaining walls. The 2018 diggings have confirmed the existence of the cult of the deity Artemis, in the Etruscan version of Artames/Artumes, witnessed by an epigraph carved on the foot of an Attic cup, dating to the full 5th century B.C.