Alessandro Sebastiani

A recent paper in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology (JMA), co-authored by myself and my colleagues Veronica Testolini and Elena Chirico, addresses a challenging issue concerning brick production in the Imperial period. For the first time, to my knowledge, we chose not to rely solely on stamps to understand trade and production sites, but instead used petrography. The results have been very unexpected, though I won’t reveal them here!

Working on those stamped bricks transported me back to the adventurous years at Alberese, a time when research was an intellectual challenge that allowed us to engage with the leading minds in the field. Studying day and night, each answer we found only sparked more questions. From 2009 to 2015, we excavated three previously unknown Roman-period sites, which have since become integral to the scholarly debates about Etruria. Those years were marked by challenges and accomplishments, as we kept our heads down and focused on understanding rather than imposing our views.

Learn more

Testolini V., Sebastiani A. and Chirico E., 2023. Roman Bricks Off the Wall. New Data for Understanding Production Centres and Distribution of Building Materials in the ager Rusellanus (Tuscany, Italy), Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 36, 2: 202-225.