Archaeologists in the Forum

Abstract

The Roman Forum was brought to light only in the 19th century, as concerned its imperial phase. Its discovery was the culmination of studies which went back to humanism. Then the 19th- and 20th-century archaeological excavations defined the topography of the Forum and its archaeological sequence from the first periods, as regards a not extensive sector. Nowadays we have for the first time a comprehensive overview of its topographical development from the 8th century BCE to 550 CE. This result represents the basic level of an urban study. After a historical contextualisation of the traditional topographical studies, this paper points out, as the traditional approach enquiries, just a fragment of the urban space, but it loses its complexity, through the Tria Fata, as a case study: the analysis shows that this minor monument was not just a component of a physical background but was reciprocally interrelated with different users reproducing different social and physical spaces, along spatial studies on space as a productive force. The case study shows that the archaeological/topographical approach to the study of the Forum and in general of the ancient city should be re-elaborated in a new epistemology of space.