Practicing Urban Archaeology in a Modern City: The Alessandrino Quarter of Rome

Abstract

This article describes the documentation according to FAIR principles of the first phase of the excavation of parts of the Alessandrino Quarter—an area of central Rome that has largely remained unexplored, although situated in the center of what is today one of the most visited cities in Europe. Archaeological fieldwork in modern cities presents excavators with a particular set of challenges. Prominent among these is archaeological complexity—the dense and complex stratigraphies, preserving vast amounts of accumulated data, that result from the often continuous transformation of urban space over millennia. While archaeologists readily acknowledge this, they seldom make public the lessons learned from conducting urban archaeological projects in modern contexts. This article seeks to make a contribution specifically in this area.