The thermal baths of San Casciano dei Bagni, near Siena, Italy, seem to be able to withstand 2,300 years of history and work wonders. After three years of excavations, the team working in this ancient site finally began to unearth the treasures buried under the mud last year. At first these were just small things like a coin or a small piece of a statue, but soon objects were encountered that experts praised as some of the most important finds in the history of the region.
Some five or six thousand gold, silver and bronze coins were found, along with two dozen statues that have been perfectly preserved for over two thousand years thanks to the mud in which they were buried.
“We thought there might be something here, but we didn’t expect anything like what we found,” excavation manager Emanuele Mariotti said in an interview with the New York Times, adding: “It was like a time capsule waiting to be opened.”
These historical works, dating from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD, were made during a period of great turmoil in the region. According to a translated statement from the Italian Ministry of Culture, “It was a historical period of significant transformations in ancient Tuscany, during the transition between the Etruscans and the Romans. A period of major conflicts between Roman and Etruscan cities, but also of struggles within the social fabric of the City…”
But the team says the statues represent not just conflict but also the growing harmony between the two cultures. The discoveries included inscriptions in both Etruscan and Latin and were buried according to Etruscan tradition. According to this tradition, the bathhouses were struck by lightning in the 1st century AD, and a practice known as fulgur conditum required them to be buried in a sacred place. However, it was a Roman tradition for the sacred place to be water. “You make an offering to water because you hope the water will give you something back,” excavation leader Jacopo Tabolli, a professor at the Siena University for Foreigners, told Reuters.
The statues, many of which depicted Greco-Roman deities, including Hygieia, goddess of health and hygiene, and Apollo, god of the Sun and healing, stood in a sanctuary before being ceremonially thrown into the water. It is possible that these statues belonged to one of the families mentioned in the inscriptions, and researchers note that the fact that they were made of bronze rather than terracotta was unusually ornate for the period and indicates the presence of a house in what Tabolli calls an “elite settlement.”
But that’s not all the discoveries show. The springs of San Casciano dei Bagni are visited even today for their therapeutic properties, and it seems that it was no different more than two thousand years ago. Other statues that do not depict gods have a much more mundane visual and show men, women and children suffering from the various ailments that brought them to the bathhouse. “This was a meeting place of healing, cultures and medical knowledge,” says Mariotti.
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