Il sito preromano e romano del Doss Penede (Nago-Torbole, TN): la campagna di scavo 2019

Begun in 2019, the excavation project at the pre-Roman and Roman hilltop-site at the Doss Penede (Nago, TN) in the High Lake Garda is the result of a fruitful collaboration among the Department of Humanities of the University of Trento, the Superintendency for Cultural Heritage of the Autonomous Province of Trento and the Township of Nago-Torbole. The site has been known since the early 1990s when its outstanding buildings attracted local interest. However, no stratigraphic investigation has been promoted until 2019, when the site was chosen as the first case-study of a wider project aimed at analysing patterns of change occurred at settle-ments, economy and the cultural landscape between the second Iron Age and the late Roman period in the area of the High Garda Lake and the Sarca valley. The first excavation season, whose results are presented and discussed in this paper, uncovered a well-planned hilltop site characterised by a system of parallel large terrace-walls linked by monumental staircases and butted by buildings of various functions. Occupied uninterruptedly between the second Iron Age and the 3rd-4th centuries AD, the site likely experienced a process of monumentalisation in the early Roman period. The Doss Penede is a quintessential example of the resil-ience of pre-roman hilltop sites at the time of Romanisation of Cisalpine Gaul.