2,300-year-old statues emerge from mud at an archaeological site in Tuscany

Archaeologists in Italy announced on Wednesday (9) the discovery of the largest deposit of statues ever seen in the country. More than 20 artifacts, dating to the 1st and 2nd centuries BC, were pulled from the mud at San Casciano dei Bagni, Tuscany, in an excavation carried out by the University for Foreigners of Siena.

The archaeological site where the work has been carried out for 16 weeks has a peculiarity that has contributed to the exceptional state of preservation of the works: a source of hot water.

The place houses, in addition to a sanctuary, a public bathroom, due to the hot springs that spring from the ground. Among the 24 pieces found there are unique examples of toreutics —metal sculptures—, five of which are about one meter high. One of the artifacts symbolizes the Greek goddess Hygia (Salus, for the Romans), associated with hygiene, who could be identified by the serpent, always coiled around her arm.

The theory raised by archaeologists at the university is that the statues adorned the surroundings of bathtubs and were anchored in travertine blocks. The arrangement in which the objects were found also reveals something curious: the pieces would have been detached from the edge of the bathing places and deposited at the bottom of the hot spring, in a kind of offering ritual, around the 1st century AD.

Archaeologists point out that the deposition of artifacts in the sanctuary continued until the 4th century. In addition to the statues, nearly 6,000 gold, silver and bronze coins were also found, also left in the hot spring water and thrown before the site was closed in the 5th century.

Professor Jacopo Taboli, who has been excavating in San Casciano dei Bagno for three years, attributes the good preservation of the artifacts to the chemical constitution of the region’s water. “It is in itself the subject of our research, as it is precisely the centrality of water that conditioned the ancients’ choice of this sacred place”, he said, who sees in the discovery a “unique opportunity to rewrite the history of ancient art and, with it, , the history of the passage between the Etruscans and the Romans in Tuscany”.

Agnese Carletti, the city’s mayor, says the discovery is positive for tourism and for the community’s historical awareness and, above all, a “real chance for rebirth”, because San Casciano dei Bagni intends to inaugurate a museum to house the statues found, work that she sees as having the potential to be “a development engine” for the municipality.