Sangro Valley Project

As a chartered excavation, the project sought to characterize and investigate the nature, pattern and dynamics of human habitation and land use in the longue durée within the context of a Mediterranean river valley system.

[3] The Sangro Valley Project was initiated in 1994 by Oxford professors John Lloyd and Gary Lock, Amalia Faustoferri and Cinzia Morelli of Beni Archeologici dell'Abruzzo, and Neil Christie of Leicester University.

The transformations uncovered through the field survey included the expansion and contraction of farming and settlements as well as the development of long-distance exchange and the emergence of the powerful local warrior-aristocracy in the Archaic period that maintained communication with Etruscan, Campanian and southern Italy.

Phase II sustained both a research program in the middle valley, with John Lloyd's survey dataset, and a didactic field school with excavations centering on Monte Pallano.

These discoveries demonstrated the theory that Monte Pallano was a fortified hill-top settlement site, as well as a political and religious centre in the Samnite period.

The first, excavated in 2002 was part of an imperial farm complex that was engaged both in industrial or agricultural processing, and in commercial redistribution of some of the products, as shown by the volume calibration marks on the sides of the storage vessels.

[5] According to the abstract for an article by Motz and Carrier, the Sangro Valley Project “developed an integrated paperless recording system in FileMaker on both laptop computers and iPads.” Data was directly entered into “the digital database (an unlocked public version of this database has been made available at www.paperlessarchaeology.com to assist others in developing similar systems).”[6] Excavations at Acquachiara and San Giovanni di Tornareccio continued in 2016,[7] and the project concluded in 2017 with final excavations at San Giovanni di Tornareccio.