The Stella River was, in antiquity, the most important watercourses of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, its relevance residing in that it connected the Alps to the Adriatic Sea. This function was facilitated by the fact that the Stella is a resurgence river, thus ensuring a sufficient flow rate to be sailed along all year round. The Anaxum Project, a partnership between the University of Udine and the local Archaeological Superintendence, aims to reconstruct the history of the Stella River basin focusing on human-landscape relationships through time. At the same time, the river is also used as a laboratory for the training of future underwater archaeologists. The archaeological excavations conducted in the river between 2011 and 2022 concerned the remains of the bridge of the via Annia (II bce) and a shipwreck area (I-II ce), which include a sewn barge, as well as the remains of a medieval wreck (XI-XIII ce). This chapter will present the study of the cultural landscape of the Stella River in Roman times, in particular through the results of the ten seasons of underwater and nautical archaeological research.

The island of Grado separates the upper Adriatic Sea from the lagoon of the same name which, due to the rise in sea level, now covers part of what was the outskirts of Aquileia in Roman times. Here probably existed a widespread port where the passage of cargo from larger ships to flat-bottomed ones that could more easily reach the urban port or travel the internal routes that interconnected the entire region took place. Until recently there were only a few timbers as evidence of the passage of ships in this area, but that changed last summer with the discovery of two new shipwrecks. In addition to these discoveries due to underwater archaeological research, the re-reading of data from an excavation of over a century ago on the Gorgo island made it possible to recognize the reuse of planks from a sewn boat. The set of all the nautical artifacts seems to identify a privileged route to reach the port of Aquileia through the inlet of Grado.

With the French at the door, on May 31st of 1509, the Head of the Venetian Garda fleet received the order to burn and sink the ships and come back to Venice: the war on the lake was temporarily lost. The small fleet, whose base was at Lazise, was formed by one light galley and two fustas, so the commandant sunk the galley and one fusta in front of the town and went with the third ship to the northern lake to take a safe trip to Venice on horseback. One shipwreck was discovered in 1960 and was studied in several campaigns, but it was not clear if it was a small galley or a large fusta. New research was started in 2018 with BENĀCUS, a project of the Department of Humanities and Cultural Heritage of the University of Udine, in a joint venture with the Trieste and Firenze Universities, and under the Superintendency for the Archaeology, Arts and Landscape of the provinces of Verona, Vicenza and Rovigo. The aim of this project was an historical research and geophysical survey to map the underwater cultural heritage (UCH) of Garda Lake.

The river Stella was one of the most important water courses of Friuli Venezia Giulia in antiquity. Its importance lies in its role of connecting territories at the base of the Alps with the Adriatic Sea shorelines. This article presents the study of a Roman shipwreck area, focusing on the relationship between the remains of a barge and a spread of archaeological materials extending upstream, North of the hull's remains, for several meters. This research aims to determine whether all the materials were part of the cargo of the same wreck. The methodology used during the underwater archaeological excavation proved that the area of scattered artefacts has a strong relation with the hull remains and the finds collected on the barge. Tegulae (roof tiles) represent the majority of artefacts both within the cargo and and in the stream of artefacts and the presence of the same producers' names on the tegulae stamps provides the most solid proof that the spread of archaeological material is linked with the barge. However, it seems unlikely that the tegulae and all the other archaeological material (amphoras, pottery, ecc) recovered so far belonged to the same boat - and some chronological inconsistency raises further questions. On the other side, the barge and the materials prove the prolonged and intense frequentation of the area and a use of the river Stella as a preferred water route.

ABSTRACT The remains of a wooden hull were exposed in 2012 near Precenicco, Italy, beside the Stella River. In 2014 it was exacavated and recovered as a single unit. Radiocarbon dated to the 11th–13th century AD, it has a flat bottom with no keel, but curved sides and a smooth turn of the bilge, atypical of riverboats. Its internal structure, with alternating L-shaped floor-timbers with one futtock per bend, is also unusual. The study is part of the Anaxum Project of the University of Udine, with the Archaeological Heritage of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, investigating the human-landscape relationship along the Stella River through time.

In 2012, fragments of hull planking bearing the signs of a Roman-era sewn vessel, with holes drilled along the plank edges, washed ashore on Venice Lido, the barrier island separating the Venice Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. This paper describes the construction features of this timber assemblage and places it within the context of other excavated sewn boats of the Upper Adriatic. The assemblage presented here best fits into the north-western Adriatic sewn tradition and likely represents either a fluvial-maritime or maritime watercraft. (C) 2018 The Author

The remains of a Roman barge were found in 1981 in the River Stella, Udine, Italy. Its cargo consisted mainly of roof tiles. It was excavated in 1998 and 1999, and detailed recording of the hull, and a second wooden structure, was achieved in 2011. A spread of material upstream of the wreck has been investigated 2012–2015. The barge was originally dated to the first quarter of the 1st century AD by the in situ cargo. This article describes the bottom-based sewn-plank hull construction and examines it in the light of local boatbuilding traditions. The second wooden structure is also described, along with recent finds and new dating evidence from the dispersed material. The Stella 1 excavation was part of the Anaxum Project, a wider study of the Stella River's cultural landscape through time.