Carlos Solis
Preliminary dating places the sanctuary’s earliest phase in the 5th–4th centuries B.C., when the Veneti—a people with their own language and script—lived in northeastern Italy and later became integrated into Rome’s system. The surviving inscriptions in the Venetic script are especially valuable for understanding local identity, religious practices, and community life before full Romanization.
Archaeologists found many stone pillar-steles at the excavation site, mostly inscribed in the Venetic script and, less often, in Latin. Many of the steles carry text on multiple faces, sometimes on three sides, which indicates a ritual function rather than a simple labeling purpose: craftsmen made these objects so people could see and read them within the sacred precinct.
Transformation in the Roman Era
One especially intriguing detail is the reuse of inscribed stones in a paved layer that preliminary dating assigns to the 1st century A.D. Archaeologists are still studying the paving’s exact function, but it contains material from older sacred structures while some original elements remained in place. This pattern does not show simple abandonment; instead it reveals continuity, transformation, and adaptation of the religious landscape—a site born in the Venetic tradition that kept its significance even under Roman influence.
Excavators uncovered rectangular foundation constructions that they interpret as temples. One building has features of a peripteral temple—that is, a structure surrounded by rows of columns. Italian reports say the complex may cover at least 1,500 m²; so far archaeologists have identified three buildings and are investigating a fourth. If those estimates hold up, this is not a small rural shrine but a substantial cult center that developed and expanded over time.
A major flood of the Adige River later buried the complex. Layers of silt, gravel, and alluvial deposits hid the structures for centuries, yet those same deposits helped preserve surfaces, stones, and foundations. For archaeologists that kind of natural “conservation” is often an advantage because it allows them to study the architecture, inscriptions, and ritual use of materials as a single, coherent record.
What Still Needs to Be Determined
Researchers have not yet identified which deity the sanctuary honored. Further epigraphic analysis should show whether the cippi name a god, name donors, or preserve established ritual formulas. The concentration of inscriptions and the long, continuous use of the site let researchers trace the shift from a local Venetic cult to a Romanized sacred landscape.
The excavations at Ponso show that Romanization in northern Italy was a gradual process: communities did not always destroy older sanctuaries; they often transformed and integrated them into new political and architectural forms. During modern roadworks, archaeologists found not only temples and inscriptions but also a record of how a local community carried its religious memory into a new historical reality.
This story draws on reporting from Arkeonews
