Rachel Opitz - A Mid-Republican House from Gabii

We discuss much of what happened at Gabii in terms of activities. We have defined a set of activity categories, with which we have associated key stratigraphic units. The use of activities as a framework is an attempt to span a number of cultural contexts and to think outside the paradigm of architectural styles and canonical typologies and outside of the framework of historical events. By using activities, we may conceptually group together the beaten earth floors of the occupation levels of Archaic huts in Area D with the tufo walls of the Area B house, on the basis of their shared importance for creating domestic spaces. We may likewise bring together the digging of a grave in the necropolis that comes after the abandonment of the Tincu House area with the construction of a new entrance to the Tincu House courtyard when it becomes an annex to the Area F public complex, as both represent transformations. The activities we have identified to stitch together the story of the site currently include construction, renovation, water management, inhabitation, transformation, dumping, and abandonment. Individual stratigraphic units may be associated with more than one activity; for example, a stratigraphic unit belonging to a wall might be associated with both construction and inhabitation. More activities will likely be added to the scheme as the project grows. We briefly describe the current activity categories here.

Construction: Construction activities are related to initial building episodes or to major building episodes generally associated with a transformation of the use of an area.

Renovation: We use the term renovation when changes to a physical structure or the organization of a space are made but the main activities within it stay the same.

Water Management: Water management activities include the construction of surface and sub-surface drains, cisterns, or wells and the blocking up of structures with these functions.

Inhabitation: The term inhabitation is used to describe activities in residential, domestic contexts.

Transformation: The term transformation denotes activities associated with a fundamental change in the use of an area and in the main types of tasks and actions taking place there. A change from a primarily domestic use to a primarily industrial one would constitute a transformation.

Dumping: The term dumping describes the active phase of the abandonment process, when people continue to frequent an area.

Abandonment: The term abandonment indicates the end of the active use of an area. We also use the term in situations where activity has lessened substantially but has not entirely ceased.

The text of A Mid-Republican House from Gabii is structured in three layers. In the first layer, we begin by telling the story of the house, the narrative of our best understanding of what happened. The second layer contains a more detailed, analytical discussion of the archaeology. The third layer provides a detailed presentation of key elements of the supporting evidencereferences to the specific stratigraphic sequences and material remains that support the argument and the story. The narratives link to one another and to the interactive 3D scene that contains a reconstruction of the houses and models of the stratigraphy. The 3D scene provides links into the project's database. As new areas of the excavation are published, the data for them will become available in this format.

Symbols for things and activities

To provide a quick visual reference to the kinds of activities with which specific stratigraphic elements are associated and the types of evidence provided, we have created a system of symbols. The symbols, shown in , appear in the information panel associated with each stratigraphic unit in the 3D scene.

Figure 2: Icons representing the types of evidence present at Gabii: fauna, ceramics, coins and other small objects, human remains, and flora.