How old is Rome? Sporadic pottery fragments from the Bronze Age have long been known about, but have only recently been found in a stratified context, in excavations on the Capitoline Hill. It is now for the first time possible to say with confidence that the continuous occupation of the site goes back to at least 1300 BC. Recent excavations have also revealed an Iron Age cemetery below the Capitoline (in what was later the Forum of Caesar), analogous to the one discovered a century ago beside the Sacra Via below the Palatine (next to the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina). The natural inference is that there were two communities, each with its own burial ground; there may well have been others nearby, in places where the conditions of the modern city make systematic exploration impossible - on the Quirinal, for instance.

LRB 18 October 2007 | PDF Download