Beneath the Basilica of San Marco: new light on the origins of Venice Albert J. Ammerman 1, * , Charlotte L. Pearson 2 , Peter I. Kuniholm 2 , Bruce Selleck 3 & Ettore Vio 4 Rome Venice 0 km 200 N The origins of Venice have been of great interest to Venetians and to scholars more generally for centuries. Long shrouded in myth and legend due to the dearth of pre-ninth-century AD evidence, recent archaeological research is now illuminating how the famous city built on water began. Using high-resolution AMS dating of peach stones (pits) from below the Basilica of San Marco, the authors provide the first evidence for human activity at what is now the location of Piazza San Marco. Dating to between AD 650 and 770, this activity included canal in-filling and ground consolidation intended to create an area that was to become the city’s civic centre in the early ninth century. Keywords: Venice, Piazza San Marco, Basilica of San Marco, AMS dating Introduction The question of how Venice, the city built on water, began is one of great interest to both the Venetian and the scholar. Over the centuries, writers have spent much time and effort attempting to tell the story of the origins of the city, from those writing in the Venetian chronicle tradition with its share of fanciful legends (Carile & Fedalto 1978; Brown 1991) to the modern historians offering a more critical perspective (e.g. Nicol 1988; Cracco- Ruggini et al. 1992; Crouzet-Pavan 1999). Even the best attempts as yet proposed are, however, limited in their scope and detail. The problem has always been the dearth of relevant first-hand documents from before the ninth century AD (Cessi 1942; Ortalli 1981; 1 Department of the Classics, Colgate University, Lawrence Hall, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346, USA 2 Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, 1215 E Lowell Street, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA 3 Department of Geology, Colgate University, Ho Science Center, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346, USA 4 Proto di San Marco, San Marco 328, 30100 Venice, Italy * Author for correspondence (Email: aammerman@colgate.edu) © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017 antiquity 91 360 (2017): 1620–1629 doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.164 1620