S. Cristina a Buonconvento (SI). La lunga durata di un centro sulla Cassia Antica

Santa Cristina in Caio is an archaeological site inhabited since prehistoric times, probably occupied seasonally. In the last years of the first century BC begins to form a settlement (probably a vicus) related to a road, probably a secondary branch of Via Cassia, that linked Chiusi to Siena; this path was also attested in Tabula Peutingeriana. Field and magnetometric surveys showed a big settlement, those main source had to be agriculture, combined with other economic forms such as travel assistance, ceramic production and commerce, thus takings hapeas a market place. The excavation, at the fourth campaign, allowed to identify a thermal bath that worked from the late first century BC until the middle of the fourth century A.D. After the abandonment of the baths, begins a phase of structure systematic despoil, that persists until the sixth century, when all the valuable materials are dismantled and recycled. Despite the obvious differences between the two periods, the settlement does not lose its characteristics of production and market place. Only at the end of the sixth century we observe structural changing of the settlement: in this period we found eleven huts above the ruins of the bath and around them, which constitute a village, a known type of cases, that sees the reuse of a settlement context of the Roman period. At this moment the chronological horizon of the village, does not go beyond the eighth century. At the beginning of the next century we will have the confirmation of the presence of the church of Santa Cristina. The church was probably founded at least a century earlier, inside a structured settlement, near an old roadway, probably collapsed in some parts, however, continued to provide the only means of communication, transportation, commerce. This peripheral road finally became Via Francigena, the most important route of medieval Europe.