The Southwest Temenos
The current research focus is a large complex of buildings known as the Southwest Temenos, located in the city’s lower agora. Prior excavations in the 1960s and 1980s revealed only a small portion of the area delimited by the temenos wall. Based on these early excavations, the complex has been conventionally dated to the second century BCE, establishing it as one of only two monumental public buildings known to have been newly constructed after Morgantina fell under Roman control. AVP launched its first investigations in 2022, pairing new excavations inside the temenos with analysis of the legacy material from earlier excavations.
Early Excavations
Portions of the Southwest Temenos first came to light during the 1962 season of the American Excavations at Morgantina. These early excavations were supervised by Ned Nabers, then a graduate student at Princeton Univeristy, who recorded the progress of his team’s work in four trench notebooks. Nabers’ notebooks provide us with an invaluable record of the 1962 excavations as well as the many discoveries made by his team.
Image shared courtesy of Visual Resources, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.
Sketch of a terracotta lion head antefix discovered by Nabers’ team on 14 April 1962.
Image shared courtesy of Visual Resources, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.
The same terracotta lion head antefix, after conservation and cleaning, in 2022.
