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Dr. Nicola Terrenato
(Director, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology; Esther B. Van Deman Collegiate Professor of Roman Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

Urban borehole surveys and the origins of the Roman Forum
The debate on the early phases of the Roman Forum goes back to the origins of urban archaeology in Rome, in the days of Giacomo Boni’s excavations at the Equus Domitiani. Since the 1990s, the dominant theory has envisioned seasonal flooding that needed to be mitigated before the city could come into existence. Recent hydrogeological data from boreholes in the neighboring Forum Boarium has been calling into question the accepted reconstruction. We now know that the environment of early Rome changed radically in the course of the 6th century BCE—a realization that is driving a broad-ranging reassessment of the first stages in the urbanization process. The paper reconsiders the new evidence, proposing a radically different sequence of events and placing it within the context of the emergence of piazzas in other central Italian urban centers.