Sangro Valley Project

A new multi-year program investigating highland societies in the central Italian Apennines is open to all students. Interested? Contact project director Dr. Fontana.

The Sangro Valley Project (SVP) is a long-running international research initiative in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, investigating the long-term dynamics of human settlement, land use, and political organisation in a Mediterranean upland valley. Initiated in 1994 by Prof. John Lloyd as an Anglo-American collaboration between Oxford University, Durham University, the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell'Abruzzo, and later the University of Oxford and Oberlin College under the direction of Prof. Susan Kane and Prof. Edward Bispham, the project pioneered the integration of GIS-based spatial analysis and, in its later phases, fully digital "paperless" recording systems in Mediterranean archaeology. Across its first two phases (1994–2017), the SVP produced foundational survey data for the middle and upper Sangro Valley, excavated the late-Hellenistic and Roman sanctuary complex on Monte Pallano, and investigated rural sites at Acquachiara and San Giovanni di Tornareccio, contributing significantly to the reinterpretation of Samnite Abruzzo as a dynamic participant in Adriatic and central Italian networks.

View of the excavated area of Monte Pallano with the Italian Apennines in the background.

A new phase of fieldwork is now being launched under the direction of Dr. Giacomo Fontana at Texas Tech University in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Chieti e Pescara. Building on the legacy datasets and stratigraphic record of the previous phases, the new programme reframes the central research questions through the lens of non-urban complexity. The analytical focus moves from the sanctuary complex to the wider 50-hectare hillfort enclosure on Monte Pallano, which recent LiDAR analysis suggests was largely unoccupied in the pre-Roman period and may have functioned as a pastoral or aggregation enclosure rather than a proto-urban settlement. This reinterpretation challenges long-standing models of Samnite urbanism derived from Graeco-Roman frameworks and aligns Monte Pallano with broader patterns observed across Apennine hillforts.

The renewed fieldwork is supported by the AIA Ellen and Charles Steinmetz Endowment for Archaeology and the Angela Caveness Weisskopf Research Fellowship Award from the Etruscan Foundation, and will combine systematic survey, geophysical prospection, remote sensing, OSL dating, and targeted testing across the enclosed area. The project also incorporates a new study abroad and field school programme through Texas Tech University, starting in summer 2026, which will train undergraduate and graduate students in Mediterranean field methods, computational archaeology, and landscape archaeology. The field school is designed to integrate research, pedagogy, and community engagement in the spirit of the original SVP didactic mission, while extending its methodological toolkit through the Texas Tech DARE Lab.

View of one of the entrances of the polygonal walls of Monte Pallano.

 

CONTACTS

Dr. Giacomo Fontana, Project Director