Description
Archaeology of a Barbarian village

The exhibition, curated by Egle Micheletto (former Superintendent) and Gian Battista Garbarino, presents the results of several excavation campaigns conducted between 1997 and 2020 in the municipal territory of Frascaro. It is an extraordinarily important site for early medieval archaeology, being one of the very few cases in which it has been possible to investigate the traces of a Goth village and a necropolis. Until recent times, the archaeological knowledge on this Germanic population, so important for the history of Italy, was limited to episodic findings or to isolated artefacts. The discovery was made in the context of preventive archaeological interventions for several public works (the variant of Borgoratto of the S.S. (state road) 30 of Valle Bormida and the embankment system of Castellazzo Bormida).

Academically speaking, the Goth village of Frascaro has earned itself a well-deserved reputation, also internationally. To the wider public, on the other hand, a small sample of findings from this site have already been presented in several important exhibitions dedicated to the Barbarian period held in the last fifteen years. However, there has been no comprehensive project to enhance the research results. The materials - jewellery, ceramics and metal objects - returned from the archaeological investigations conducted in the last twenty years in the area of Frascaro, will be put on show to the public on a large fluvial terrace which has also preserved evidence of pre-protohistoric settlements (from the Copper Age, to the late Bronze Age, to the middle Iron Age). Here, at the end of the fifth century AD, several Goth families founded a small village of wooden huts, burying their dead in a cemetery a short distance from the town.