Construction with wood and amphorae along the shoreline of Altino (North Lagoon of Venice). A proposed chronological reinterpretation of amphoric deposits from embankment structures

The study proposes a new methodology of chronological reinterpretation related to some embankment infrastructures found during decades of underwater investigations along the seabed of today's North Lagoon of Venice, an area corresponding to the ancient shoreline of the Roman city of Altino. These works, which the scientific community tends to interpret as multipurpose structures, mostly related to navigation, were formed by a double wooden cage to contain discharges of fictile material (amphorae, but also other ceramic artifacts and building waste). Their considerable diffusion throughout the area suggests their prominent role in defining land arrangements, but the local scientific literature have not yet arrived at an univocal and pointed answer about their chronology. This issue arises from the chronological incoherence given back by the radiocarbon analyses conducted on the wooden elements of many of these structures (mostly from the late Roman period) and from the fictile materials (mostly from the early imperial period and sometimes relating to rather wide chronological horizons, including between the 1st and 4th-5th centuries AD). The paper presents the results of a systematic study approach of the most representative amphoric deposits, combining integrated analyses related to the state of preservation of the findings, pointed quantification of fragments, and statistical simulations. It was thus possible to reach a reliable reconstruction of the phases of building and use over time of these embankments (1st-5th/6th centuries AD). A picture of a maritime reality extensively exploited by Altino and closely linked to it throughout the lifetime of the Roman city emerges.