ARCHAEOLOGICAL AREA OF CORVIANO

In the extreme eastern sector of the territory of Vitorchiano, close to the territory of the municipality of Soriano nel Cimino, and the municipality of Bomarzo, numerous villages developed in ancient times, which, in Roman times, were connected to each other by a stretch of the important Via Ferentiensis (proceeding from Ferentum towards Falerii Novi) and its local branches. Some of these villages remained alive even in the Middle Ages. Among the areas that present a greater quantity of archaeological emergencies is the one in which the Corviano settlement was built, located on a wooded plateau of volcanic rock, which juts out like a wedge between the valleys of two small streams (confluent in the Vezza stream), bordered by high rocky overhangs, gorges and picturesque. Among other things, the remains of Etruscan and Roman walls, a large grouping of ancient underground cave dwellings and the ruins of a medieval castle are preserved. The site, formerly known as Fundus Corbiani or Castrum Corbiani, in the Middle Ages was for a long time owned by the Benedictines of the Abbey of S. Andrea in Flumine.

Among the remains of ancient walls, those of an Etruscan wall (for a total of about 80 meters in length) deserve particular attention, which has sections made with different construction types. One of these sections, in particular, is built with large blocks with an almost rectangular section, with angular “chair” joints of the Punic-Hernian type. The underground dwellings, built at the steep end of the hillock, must have been, originally, about thirty; but many of them are currently completely or partially collapsed. Perhaps dating back to the time of the barbarian invasions, these houses have undergone changes and re-uses throughout the Middle Ages and in subsequent periods (some still served as a stable refuge for farmers and shepherds in the early 1900s). It is presumed that, originally, the houses themselves were mainly made up of a single room, with a single opening to the outside. The connections between several contiguous rooms, the current access doors and the stairs leading to them are not original. The primitive accesses consisted, however, in today’s windows, at the time reachable by means of stairs and wooden walkways suspended on the cliff (as can be seen from the grooves and joints still present in some caves).

The castle, built on an unspecified date by gentlemen of whom we have not received news, in 1278 passed to Orso Orsini, nephew of Pope Nicholas III. It was then disputed for a long time between the Orsini and the Viterbesi, the last of whom demolished it around 1304. There remain various ruins of the wall perimeter, which overlooks with two sides on deep natural cliffs and, with one side, on an artificial valley ( perhaps older). Its foundations rest, in part, on a remnant of Etruscan-Roman walls. Within the aforementioned castle perimeter there are few traces of a small church. The whole area close to the cave dwellings and the castle is then affected by the presence of other notable archaeological remains. In fact, there are preserved, among other things, the medieval ruins of two other churches and a mill, a necropolis with anthropomorphic pit tombs and various pestarole (pairs of tanks carved into the rock for pressing and collecting the must). In particular in the Pietreto forest, located in the municipality of Vitorchiano on the ground overlooking the Corviano hill, there is a large concentration of pestarole and other archaeological evidence of volcanic boulders scattered on the ground, processed for the purposes inherent in life practices, burial and of worship. Dwellings from the Etruscan-Roman period, tombs of different types and designs and a huge amount of worked boulders with a function yet to be determined.

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

D’ARCANGELI V., Monumenti archeologici ed artistici del territorio di Soriano nel Cimino e delle zone limitrofe, Soriano nel Cimino 1967.

D’ARCANGELI V., Soriano nel Cimino nella storia e nell’arte, Viterbo 1981.

GIANNINI P., Centri etruschi e romani dell’Etruria Meridionale, vol. I, Grotte di Castro (VT) 2003.

GOLETTI A. – SERRONE G., Il Santarello, La Fornacchia e Santa Lucia, frazioni di Maria, Città del Vaticano 1999.

MENICHINO G., Escursionismo d’autore nella Terra degli Etruschi, III, Viaggio nella Tuscia: I Monti Cimini e le valli delle antiche civiltà rupestri, Pitigliano (GR) 2008.

PATRIZI D., La Selva di Malano, in Tuscia,IX, 29, Viterbo 1982.

RASPI SERRA J., Una necropoli altomedievale a Corviano e il problema delle sepolture a “logette” lungo le sponde mediterranee, in Bollettino d’arte LXI, 1976.

SANNA M. – PROIETTI L., Presenze archeologiche lungo la Via publica Ferentiensis e le sue diramazioni, Viterbo 2007.

SORIANO NEL CIMINO, a cura della CARIVIT (autori: D’ARCANGELI V. – SANTOCCHI A.), Viterbo 1993.