Between Tarquinia and Gravisca

The dynamics between Tarquinia and Gravisca are explored, considering our increasing information about the general outline of the city, the relationship between the city and its ports, and the circulation of goods and skills from within the Mediterranean The relationship between the metropolis and its emporic sanctuary of Gravisca has recently been illuminated by the discovery of the Northern area of the sanctuary, which is definitely monumental in comparison to the modest features of the Southern. Such circumstances confirm the alternating but persistent control of this settlement on the seashore by the metropolis. Therefore, it is now possible to figure out that Gravisca was part of a broad and solid system shading the strategic and political programme of Tarquinia, focused on the ‘emporion-city-territory’ relationship. The emporion itself probably arose as a consequence of a specific need of the metropolis to relate the intermingled Western Mediterranean situation of the second half of the 7th century BCE to the network of both its seashore minor sites and its inland territory.