Description
OPEN THURSDAY 25 APRIL AND WEDNESDAY 1 MAY 2024

The exhibition, curated by Egle Micheletto (already Superintendent) and Gian Battista Garbarino, presents the results of different excavation campaigns conducted between 1997 and 2020 in Frascaro. It is a site of extraordinary importance for Early Medieval archaeology, being one of the very few cases in which it has been possible to investigate the traces of a Gothic village and necropolis.

Until recent times, the archaeological knowledge of this Germanic population, so important for the history of Italy, was mostly limited to episodic findings or isolated artifacts. The discovery came within the scope of the preventive archaeological survey for several public works (the Borgoratto variant of Trunk Road 30 of Valle Bormida and the embankment system of Castellazzo Bormida).

In academic terms, the Gothic settlement of Frascaro has earned great popularity, also internationally. A small sample of finds from this site had already been presented to a wider public at several important exhibitions dedicated to the Barbarian period held in the last fifteen years. What was missing was a project for an overall enhancement of the research results. The jewelry, pottery and metal objects unearthed during the archaeological excavation conducted in the last twenty years in the municipal area of Frascaro will be put on show to the public, on a large fluvial terrace which has preserved testimonies of pre-protohistorical settlements (from the Copper Age, to the Late Bronze Age, to the Middle Iron Age). In the late 5th century A.D. some Gothic families founded a small village of wooden huts in this area, burying their dead in a cemetery a short distance from the settlement.