Among the most remarkable finds from the excavation at Falerii Novi is a fragment of architectural terracotta dating to the second century BCE, a reminder that the site’s history stretches far beyond the imperial and late antique layers that dominate much of the assemblage.
Architectural terracottas were the decorative and protective elements of Roman temple roofs. Given its considerable thickness, this fragment almost certainly belonged to a temple rather than a domestic building. Its function was both structural and protective: Roman temples of this period were built primarily in mud brick and timber, with very little use of stone, meaning the roof was designed with large beams to protect walls in perishable material. Terracotta slabs were fixed along the edges of the roof to shield the heavy wooden beams from the elements, while lighter elements such as antefixes decorated the smaller lateral rafters.
What makes this particular fragment especially fascinating is a detail incised into the clay before firing: the number six. This simple mark reveals an entire operational sequence. Before the terracottas were fired, the craftsmen already knew exactly where each piece would be positioned on the roof and in what order it would be installed. The ceramist producing these elements was therefore working directly for the temple – part of an organised workshop, likely located not far from the building itself, producing made-to-measure components for a specific architectural project: a kind of ancient IKEA assembly system.
The fragment was found in a third-century CE layer, making it what archaeologists call residual material, an object significantly older than the context in which it was discovered, having survived for centuries before ending up in later deposits as the city was transformed around it.
By the time Falerii Novi developed its later tufo, brick and mortar architecture, large protective terracotta slabs were no longer needed. Decorative terracottas continued to be used, but the architectural language had fundamentally changed. The city’s sacred topography, however, endured: geophysical survey has revealed traces of several monumental temple structures, including one near the forum whose foundations remain visible today. How many temples once stood at Falerii Novi, and when they fell out of use, remains one of the many questions that only further excavation can answer.
