"Etruscan funerary landscape around Norchia (Viterbo, Italy): a multi-varied project in defense of cultural heritage"

The necropolis of Norchia, in the area of Viterbo (80 km. North of Rome), with its rock-cut tombs, is one of the most important archaeological sites of southern Etruria. This is an important and rare example of rock architecture, one of the few preserved in Italy, and is comparable with the rock-cut tombs of Kaunos and Demre in Turkey, in the regions called Caria and Lycia in ancient times. The most flourishing period of the city was from the late fourth to mid-second century B.C., a period in which the city certainly belonged to the Tarquinia State. An imposing and impressive number of rock-cut tombs, dating back to the fourth century B.C., are to be found throughout the three valleys of Pile, Acqualta and Biedano, which surround the city. Along the "Fosso dell'Acqualta" the rock-cut temple tombs have facades that imitate those of a Doric temple with pediments, friezes, protomi and acroteria carved into the tufa. Thanks to the drawings by Canina in 1842 and by Ainsley in 1849, not only the original design but also the state of conservation of the monuments in the 19th century is known. This is of the utmost importance seeing the poor state of conservation of the monuments nowadays. The tombs are spread out over several terraces reached by winding paths that rise up from the valley. Tombs of different architectural types are present in the necropolis, built on three distinct terraces, one below the other. The uppermost terrace houses the monumental tombs; the middle terrace the dado tombs, the bottom terrace, the most modest tombs (Fig. 3). The project, currently being carried out by the Institute for Studies on the Italic and Ancient Mediterranean Civilization (ISCIMA), in collaboration with the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage for Southern Etruria and the Italian Geographic Society under the patronage of the Department of Cultural Heritage of the National Research Council of Italy, initially involved a thorough study of the tombs, excavated in the period 1971-1974, along the "Fosso del Pile" (south east of the city), in the central area, known as Pile B, and all the archaeological remains found there, but was later enlarged to include the archaeological, historical and territorial stratification of the entire province of Viterbo. The documentation, produced by ISCIMA and which will be published in the book Norchia II, is of the utmost importance in the reconstruction of this ancient landscape. Thanks to photographs taken at the time of excavation, can the landscape, which has greatly deteriorated over time, be reconstructed.