The field walking survey of the territory of Fondi, coordinated by G. Olcese and carried out by collaborators and students (University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Chair of Archaeologic Research Methodology), in accordance with the Superintendence of Archaeological Heritage of Lazio, has arisen from a project aimed (at a systematic examination of ) the production areas of amphorae and the production of wine in southern Lazio between the 4th century BC and the 1st century AD. Fondi lies on a farmstead estate (rich agricultural area) which produced very fine wines: Cecubus and Fondanum.

The thriving wine production, from the end of the 3rd-beginning of the 2nd century BC up to the early Imperial Age, is testified by the finding of large amounts of fragments of amphorae, among which also kiln wastes, in three sites in the plain of Fondi: Canneto, Monte S. Biagio and Torre S. Anastasia.

The survey of September 2006 was focused on the verification of the production areas previously indicated (Hesnard-Lemoine 1981); it also aimed at a better knowledge and (typological, epigraphic and archaeometrical) characterization of the amphorae produced. A further aim of the work is to establish connections between the area of Fondi and the cargoes of some shipwrecks found in the central-southern Tyrrhenian area, in the south of France and in Spain.

Bibliography

Lugli 1940, 28; Callender 1965, 219; Hesnard 1977, 157-159; Hesnard 1978, 42-45;

Hesnard, Lemoine 1981, 244-245; Hesnard et alii 1989, 35-65; Storchi Marino 2002, 33-41; Di Fazio 2006.