Recent work at Italica

ITALICA NEEDS LITTLE INTRODUCTION in a symposium dealing with ancient urbanism in Iberia. This town, which lies on a tributary of the river Guadalquivir, a few kilometres from Seville was the first permanent Roman settlement in Hispania and the patria of the Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. It has long been a source of interest to historians and archaeologists. The visible ruins at the site were recognized as corresponding to ancient Italica in the seventeenth century. The earliest scientific excavations took place towards the middle of the eighteenth century by Demetrios De Los Nos, although they were not undertaken on a systematic basis until 1912. Much of the excavation of what is now visible in the Hadrianic nova urbs was undertaken for the occasion of the Ibero-American Exhibition in 1929 (Garcia y Bellido 1960). Occasional excavations have been undertaken subsequently at different points in the vetus and nova urbs until the 1980’s by Luz6n, Canto, Pellicer, Le6n and Corzo amongst others. A more recent phase of work at the site began following the establishment of Italica as a separate administrative entity (Conjunto Arqueoldgico) within the newly established (1985) Andalucian cultural heritage management framework (Consejeria de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucia). The work took place under the aegis of the ‘Proyecto Italica’ (Rodrfguez Hidalgo 1989) and has had two main aim Firstly it has taken in hand the conservation, restoration and preservation of the standing structures excavated up until the late 1980’s. Secondly it has sought to measure the archaeological potential of the site by undertaking a combined systematic surface and geophysical survey of the site. The results of this have allowed the understanding of earlier work to be rationalized and for medium-and long-term research priorities for the site as a whole to be developed. The aim of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the archaeological work that has been undertaken at Italica over the last 10 or 15 years.