MiC archaeologist reports on Facebook discovery of ancient statue fragment

It has caused a bit of a stir in the last few hours, a Facebook post published by Santino Alessandro Cugno, an archaeological official of the Ministry of Culture who gave news, practically live, of the discovery of a head of an ancient statue in the excavations of the basilica of Santo Stefano/Villa degli Anicii on the Via Latina, in Rome. According to the archaeologist it may be a head of Apollo, “of high workmanship” as he puts it, possibly from the first century AD.

Under Cugno’s post users’ comments were unleashed, some of them even launching into hypotheses about the identification of the subject (some say Bacchus, instead of Apollo, because of the hairstyle): Cugno obviously postpones any conclusion to a more advanced stage of the search, or at least to when the resurfaced sculpture will be extracted and cleaned (“with the hope of finding more fragments,” he writes in the comments), and “studied thoroughly” as the archaeologist himself points out.

A quite unusual communication, in short, since it is not easy to come across archaeologists on the Ministry’s payroll who communicate their discoveries in real time, as in this case (usually the practice is to wait for at least the first reconnaissance, while others are even more strict: news of discoveries is given only after studies have taken place), but enough to cause a stir and, of course, much curiosity around this artifact that has resurfaced from history.

MiC archaeologist reports on Facebook discovery of ancient statue fragment

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.