Il progetto ArcheoNevola e la pianificazione di una scoperta: la tomba di un principe Piceno a Corinaldo (Ancona)

In Corinaldo, located in the northern Marche region, an integrated research brought to light a high-status tomb dating back to the 7th century BC, which provides remarkable data on a wide range of aspects of the Picenian culture in this central part of Italy. The discovery is the result of a combination of aerial survey, geophysical prospection and targeted archaeological excavation, undertaken by the multidisciplinary ArcheoNevola project, based in the University of Bologna, and carried out in ad-vance of a planned development program. The cooperation with the Marche Archaeological Superintendency and the Municipality of Corinaldo allowed to start with a preliminary impact assessment, within the designed construction of a new Sport complex in the Nevola River Valley. The excavations carried out in 2017 and 2018, here presented, involving small-scale trials followed by open-area investigation, quickly confirmed and supplemented the results of the non-invasive survey, revealing the remains of an extraordinary funerary deposit related to a princely leader within the early Iron Age society of the region. As the first such monument identified and excavated in northern Marche this has provided an extraordinary opportunity to investigate a type-site of the Picenian culture, up till now poorly documented and little understood despite its undoubted importance in the pre-Roman development of the area. The success of the operation lies both in the value of the finding, which belongs to a rare class of elitarian funerary monument, and in discovery methodology, as part of development-led archaeology. At this stage of the research, still in progress, questions remain about several aspects of the Picene tomb and the ancient funerary landscape, but some preliminary thoughts can be advanced about the amount of data collected, which will be progressively refined when the investigation goes further.