The Archaeology Antiquarium is a heterogeneous collection composed of some 1500 original artefacts accompanied in most cases by generic information about their origin.
Exhibits include ceramics from Etruria and the Aegean area, Attic vases painted with black and red figures painted over in the Hellenistic period, kitchen and table earthenware dating from the Roman period. There are also a large number of architectural and votive terracottas coming from ancient shrines, small fictile objects, and a series of metal artefacts (fibulae, belt buckles, bronze razors, etc.) and glass items (balm containers, twisted sticks, etc.). In some cases the exhibits were part of funerary outfits dating from the Roman and Hellenistic periods. Also worthy of note are some bas-relief and full relief stone sculptures.
The collection is one of a series set up within the university, mainly for educational and experimental purposes. Following the prevailing schools of thought in archaeological research, the collection was gathered around the 1950s by Silvio Ferri, a Classical Archaeology Professor who obtained the various items from some of the main state museums, such as the Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, which provided fine Etruscan buccheri and a series of votive statuettes, and the Archaeological Museum of Taranto, from which came most of the Attic ceramics, the clay oscilla and a set of prehistoric stone implements.
Other exhibits come from the selling, and consequent dispersal to various museums, of the vast collection of the tenor Evan Gorga, and from donations by private owners. Foremost among these was the Florentine lawyer Ottolenghi di Vallepiana, who agreed to transfer his collection, of varied origin and including some fakes, to the University of Pisa. Another nucleus belonged to Ferri himself; other smaller legacies have come in recent years from private citizens.
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