The Vasca or Great Enclosed Spring
The only structure so far unearthed which appears to belong to this period is a large enclosed spring (the vasca) measuring 21 m east-west. Its current length measures 24m north-south, but it has been only partially unearthed. It was likely ca. 38 cm long. It was built in two phases. The first or Late Etruscan phase may date to the 2nd half of the 2nd to the beginning of the 1st half of the 1st century B.C. It features walls in opus incertum with large stones, placed in a sandy mortar mixed with impermeable clay. At this period the pool was flanked by long corridors on at least three sides, but the interior of the spring area has not been completely excavated. The pool was likely entered from the southeast via a sloping surface that led down to a sacellum or small shrine projecting into the pool.
The function of the vasca was to provide a bathing plunge. The
water flowed in from a spring, which still flows there today. At its deepest
point in the center, the water was only a few meters deep. It exited through
a massive drain in the center of the east wall. The presence of
blocks
of travertine found in situ, creating a base for columns surrounding the
pool, and the existence of the three corridors suggests a structure with
pretensions to luxury. It was built to surround a sacred spring with colonnaded
walkways, where visitors could come for cures much as they do today
at various springs within and surrounding Chianciano Terme. The similarity
to the great pool of the Medicis at BagnoVignoni,
in Tuscany, with its natural healthful springs, surrounding corridors,
pool and history stretching back to Etruscan and Roman times is extraordinary,
suggesting a link between the ancient Etruscan world, the Romans, the Renaissance
and our own age in the attention paid to the therapeutic qualities of water.
Struttura A
The original use of another Etruscan structure excavated, Struttura A, is unknown but it may have been an administration building for the bath. It featured a foundation of at least four courses of irregularly shaped stones, primarily sandstone, and probably had walls of wattle and daub construction. The wattle formed a lattice or grid pattern constructed of small logs of oak and hornbeam, covered with a clay daub mixed with sand. To make the walls strong enough to support the tiled roof found fallen in the layer above in 1995, it was necessary to use posts or columns of oak placed within the wattle and daub. One fragment of such a post, measuring 30cm in diameter was found by Wall E. Such structures needed to be repaired often and the final phase of repair was dated by Carbon 14 analysis to A.D. 276 plus or minus 85 years.
Struttura A featured three steps, known from surviving foundations, leading down into a large room. This structure may have been a house, a shop or some sort of official building. Its simple floor is of beaten earth with a limewashed surface above a level of clay mixed with river pebbles and tile fragments. There may have been a small room in the southwest corner of the building where fragments of a dolium sunken into the ground have been found.
The date of the construction of Struttura A in not known, but a black glazed ceramic sherd not yet identified has been found beneath its foundations. If this sherd is Hellenistic, its presence adds credence to the theory that this structure is contemporary to the vasca, but it may instead be contemporary with Struttura D, i.e. early Roman.
Struttura D
Behind Struttura A and separated from it by an alleyway is
Struttura
D. It is delineated by four walls but its south wall is cut diagonally
by another later wall forming part of Struttura C. Like Struttura A this
building had a beaten earth floor washed with lime and wattle and daub
walls. Wood
from the wattle has been preserved here. When Struttura D was destroyed,
it was replaced with a later structure, perhaps a bath. All that survives
is a small
pool of later Roman date, probably A.D. 114.