The Furfo Project is an interdisciplinary research project organised, starting in 2023 and for
a three-year duration, thanks to an agreement between the Soprintendenza Archeologia
Fine Arts and Landscape for the Provinces of L’Aquila and Teramo, the University of L’Aquila – Department of Human Sciences Department of Human Sciences, the British School at Rome and the Municipality of Barisciano.
The subject of the survey programme is the vicus of Furfo, an important archaeological site
Municipality of Barisciano (AQ), located in the Aterno Valley along the route of the Via Claudia Nova. Already affected by substantial presences of the ‘vestina’ period, for the Roman period Furfo is an important example of a particular type of settlement, the vicus, a typology well known, particularly in the Apennine areas of central Italy, as a specific land-use organisations. The continuity of occupation into the Middle Ages is evidenced by the remains of the Church of Santa Maria di Farfona, which has preserved in its toponym the memory of the name of the ancient Vicus.
The state of conservation of the area and the important archaeological issues for all the occupation phases of the site guided the design of the intervention. The first year of the investigation, which began in September 2023, allowed both a first contact with the orographic context where the settlement of the site took place, as well as a first definition of the occupied areas of the site, as well as an initial definition of the areas occupied by the settlement, from the early pre-Roman phases to those, at least late Republican, related to the much larger vicus. The very few previous investigations had been able to define these
(Francesco Maria Cifarlli, Stephen Kay, Alberta Martellone)