Modernization work on the railway line in the Municipality of Pompeii and the construction of an underground parking lot on Via Fucci, behind the Pompei Santuario station, have brought to light occupation levels predating Roman colonization, in an area located about 400 meters east of the Porta Sarno in the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
The most interesting discovery is a pre-Roman necropolis, spanning a chronological arc from the 3rd to the 1st century BC, currently consisting of 35 graves.
These are simple pit inhumations, a semicappuccina or with amphora coverings (all of North African import, some with Punic inscriptions, arranged alternately neck-to-puntal in a recurrent number of 7), characterized by the presence of few grave goods (mainly perfume bottles and coins) and by an excellent state of conservation of the skeletal remains, thanks to the immersion of the graves in groundwater, which has allowed the initiation of a paleo-anthropological research campaign on the remains.
In light of these exceptional findings, the Superintendent has declared the necessity to continue and further expand the research area to complete the understanding of the necropolis and outline the ancient landscape characterizing the eastern suburb of Pompeii, of which little is still known. Thanks to preventive archaeology and the synergistic action between the Superintendency, the Municipality, and EAV, which has allowed the sharing of procedures and objectives, important results are being achieved in the field of protection and enhancement of a territory of crucial historical and archaeological importance. We hope to soon share new data from the progress of the excavations.
The area where the work was to be carried out, for which the then Superintendency of Pompeii had expressed a favorable opinion as early as 2007, reconfirmed by the Special Superintendency of Naples and Pompeii in 2009 and 2010, had already been the subject of preliminary investigations, especially geoarchaeological surveys and trenches, due to the discovery of the 79 AD levels at depths exceeding 6 meters from the current ground level and submerged in the water table.
Recent excavations, starting in the spring of 2023, under the direction of the Superintendency for the Metropolitan Area of Naples, have confirmed the presence of extensive, perfectly preserved plowed fields under the thick layer of ashes from the great Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD: a system of ancient furrows and ridges oriented north-south and arranged directly on protohistoric levels, with predominantly vegetable crops, which supplied the daily markets of Pompeii, near the course of the ancient Sarno River, which must have been much closer to the city than it appears today.
Macro-remains and pollen analyses are being conducted to characterize in detail the type of vegetables cultivated, although the size of the surface remains, the distribution typology, and the size of the root systems already suggest fields cultivated with perennial artichoke plants.
After the completion of containment works, thanks to the use of drainage pumps, control surveys have been conducted at about -7.50 meters from the ground level in correspondence with the underground utilities for the parking lot.
Here, a channel, a paleoalveolus of anthropic origin with a north-south orientation, has been identified, in which material of various natures belonging to probably devastated funerary contexts has been collected: hundreds of tile fragments, a large number of dolia and amphora fragments, about twenty volcanic stone columellas—removed in antiquity and accumulated in the channel already before the arrangement of the Roman plowed fields—tiles with Oscan inscriptions, and considerable-sized wooden remains.
The discovery of a female head in gray Campanian tuff with traces of red color in the hairstyle stands out.
It is likely that the channel, characterized mainly by materials belonging to devastated funerary contexts, is related to the territorial reorganization of the Sullan period, which took place after the colonial deduction (foundation of the Roman colony) of Pompeii in 89 BC.
Investigations continue, as do archaeobotanical and paleoanthropological analyses, with a view to multidisciplinary documentation of the archaeological context, which is providing a wealth of data of absolute interest.
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