Drawing and Archaeology: new research objectives. The case of Civita Musarna: the only full-discovered Etruscan city

Although the etrusco-roman site of Musarna, 10 km West of Viterbo, was discovered in the mid XIX cent., its most comprehensive knowledge is due to recent excavations (Fig. 1), conducted jointly by the École Française of Rome and the Superintendence for Southern Etruria, between 1983 and 2003 (see lately, Jolivet 2013). The successive stages of the investigation have established that, apparently without any interruption, the city has been occupied from the end of occupied IV cent. BC until the beginning of the VII cent. AD. It is now possible to establish that it has been founded as a strategic and agrarian internal colony by the Etruscan metropolis of Tarquinia, and remained in its dependency until about 280 BC, when Roma conquered the entire area. The inscriptions and epitaphs unearthed in the site or in the necropolis show that up to I° cent. BC the only language spoken in Musarna seems was that of the Etruscans, as well as, at least until all the Hellenistic period, the inhabitants retain the organization based on the model of a large Etruscan cities. At this social structure, therefore, we must ascribe the recognized public buildings, such as, i.e., the two temples probably dedicated to Hercules and Bacchus, a market-place and a portico, built during various phases of renovation of the central square of the city. The defensive works and infrastructure systems are also fully Etruscan. To now, therefore, Civita Musarna is the only city largely investigated in the classical territory of Etruria and, therefore, constitutes the most concrete example from which it is possible to develop studies and detailed investigations into the urban tracking methods used by the Etruscans. The study here presented is a subsequent increase in the knowledge of the gromatics tracking process and has been developed with the scientific method of survey, according to the analysis backwards. This method is applied together, surveyor and archaeologist, following a linear scan and preordained of phases, whose individual results are discussed and verified as a whole.