Satricum vanuit het perspectief van destructie: ontwikkeling en onderhoud van een vroeg-stedelijk centrum

Satricum is often regarded as one of the few well-excavated pre-Roman settlements in Latium Vetus. Studies have so far primarily focused on the rather well-defined contexts – specifically hut features, (rubbish and cooking) pits, tombs, and votive deposits – which have been used to trace the settlement’s development from ca. 850 to 500 BC. Considerably less attention has been paid to the more ambiguous layers containing remains of demolished and destroyed buildings, colloquially referred to as ‘destruction layers’. Such layers are not easily associated with a particular structure and are often ignored in discussions of issues such as spatial organisation. They do, however, testify to the continuous process in which structures were reused, rebuilt, remodelled, and destroyed. In this article, we build on the digital elaboration of archaeological data recovered by the University of Groningen at Satricum between 1979 and 1991, enabling us to assess the traces of destruction as a testament to the rapid development of this urban centre. Two discussed destruction phenomena attest to the reuse of building debris in both small-scale and large spatial reorganisations of the settlement.