South Italian Archaeology

U radu se predstavljaju i analiziraju rezultati zaštitnog arheološkog istraživanja provedenog krajem 2017. godine u privatnoj kući vlasnika Mladena Galića smještenoj u staroj jezgri grada Hvara, u predjelu Groda. Na osnovu tipološke analize materijala pronađenog u dvije arheološke sonde, ljudska aktivnost se na ovom prostoru odvija u širokom rasponu od kasnog brončanog doba te kroz željezno doba. U radu se pretpostavlja postojanje podgradinskog naselja na južnim padinama brda, koje je pripadalo utvrđenoj gradini na mjestu današnje tvrđave Fortice u gradu Hvaru.

The surroundings of the city of Hvar, along with several caves, had
been populated since the Neolithic. With the development of agriculture,
commerce and sea trade and the influx of new settlers, the settlements
adopted to these new times. In the Bronze Age had begun the settlement
on the site of the city Fortress, Fortica, strongly fortified, with checkpoints to the east. It also had its necropolis, above the Vira bay, with lots of burial mounds. The acropolis, or higher part of the settlement on the hillfort itself, has been swept away by historical changes, but in its lower parts, within abs around the medieval ramparts in the present-day city quarter of Groda, finds of Bronze Age, Iron Age and Antique pottery have been ascertained in abundance, which proves that on this area life had developed in continuity for thousands of years; the hillfort in Hvar and the settlement under it, connected with the port, is a unique place in the maritime constellation of the Adriatic.
Archaeological finds in the Galić house are not typical for a narrow
prehistoric period or a specific ethnic group, but instead belong to pottery used from late Bronze Age and throughout the Iron Age on eastern Adriatic. The presence of imported pottery helps a lot; the only datable fragment comes from south Italy, 9th c. BCE.
Nothing except pottery gas been found and there is a possibility that
the original strata had been disturbed, due to steepness of the site, erosion and building of the house in the past.
The pottery found on this site can be dated throughout the millennium
BCE, and proves once again that the area of the city of Hvar was the most important settlement on this island in prehistory.

Le tragiche testimonianze di una battaglia svoltasi durante l'età del Bronzo sono state documentate dalle ricerche in un santuario costiero del Salento riportato in luce nella splendida cornice della Baia di Torre dell'Orso nelle cui vicinanze si trova la vasta area archeologica di Roca Vecchia: la documentazione di questo sanguinoso fatto d'arme del II millennio a.C. ci porta a riflettere sulla costante della guerra nella storia dell'umanità

Si espongono i risultati di un’indagine di ricognizione riguardante il territorio di Altamura (Bari, Puglia) mirante al censimento ed al controllo della localizzazione delle aree archeologiche neolitiche già note, nonché all’individuazione di nuovi siti neolitici. Sulla base di peculiari caratteristiche geomorfologiche e ambientali, attraverso il supporto di rilievi topografici, geologici e aerofotografici I.R.F.C., sono stati indentificati 27 nuovi siti neolitici, 22 in territorio di Altamura, 5 in territorio di Santeramo in Colle e 2 in territorio di Matera. Inoltre sono stati individuati 2 nuovi siti riferibili all’età del Bronzo.

The Latin colony of Cales, with which in 334 BC. Rome placed its first stronghold in Campania, extends on a large plateau of about 63 hectares, abruptly cut in the sixties of the last century by the Autostrada del Sole.
The study was aimed at reconstructing, as far as possible, the shape of the Roman city, starting from the recognition of monuments and visible remains and from what has been documented by research and previous excavations, using also the notes and data collected in surveys conducted, albeit not systematically, since 1990. The research was stimulated by the numerous traces of buried structures recognizable in historical aerial photographs and satellite images, from which emerged a reconstruction of the Roman settlement's layout.

The paper (unpublished Masterthesis) addresses the role of rare native funerary stones found in the Italian Salento area in the interpretation of a Middle-Ground culture comprised of a mix of indigenous and Greek people in a pre-colonial framework. The paper wishes to contribute to the ongoing research of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam focused on uncovering the true nature of early Greek-indigenous encounters in the Salento area, whereby a mix-culture of both parties came into being, displaying a shared heroic identity at the level of the elite.

The discovery of an agricultural press counterweight, during an archaeological reassessment of Region I.20 at Pompeii, alters previous hypotheses regarding the viticultural function of this insula. Traditional interpretations of quality, quantity and method must be adjusted. Furthermore, the type of counterweight found, a Semana (T55121) or Brun type 11, has implications not only for this insula and Pompeii, but also for the wider Italian peninsular. It illustrates a different method of mechanical pressing to that commonly found in Campania and is the first of this type to be found in southern Italy, which supports the theorised Greek colonial distribution of this technology. This brief study illuminates the need and the benefit of such archaeological reassessments, particularly in relation to ancient agricultural features.

Indigenous pottery plays a vital role in interpretations of the relationship between the indigenous population and the Greek settlers in south Italy.  Indigenous pottery habitually turns up in otherwise Greek habitation, ritual and mortuary contexts. Whereas imported Greek or ‘colonial’ pottery from indigenous contexts has been dealt with in considerable detail, the finds of indigenous pottery in Greek colonial contexts has not been thoroughly investigated in the western Mediterranean. Much more scholarly attention focused on the Black Sea region has, however, concentrated on the presence of indigenous Scythian and Taurian pottery in the Greek apoikiai, especially in the north-western Black Sea region. Similarities in the archaeological record of the two areas are numerous. In this paper we compare the occurrence of indigenous pottery in Greek contexts in the two regions and present some of the different inferences that have been drawn about the identity of the people who used the pots.

This paper summarizes the thesis, exposed by the writer over the past two decades, about the Romanization of Bruttii. The Romanization of Bruttii is carried out and completed between the third and first centuries BC The analysis of this process is very complex and must necessarily be inserted in the framework of the annexation of Rome to the southern part of the Italy and in the gradual Romanization of the people who had settled there. The authentic and definitive Romanization of Bruttii seems to be accomplished, then, only after the end of the war with Hannibal.
In Bruttii, as we have tried to show in the last two decades, there are all reasonable evidence to suggest that, during the second half of the second century BC and the first half of the second century AD, in some areas of the region has taken hold the “slave mode of production”. To be affected by this mode of production are the areas of Copia, Vibo Valentia, the middle valley of the Crati, coastal areas and some other enclaves in the rest of the region. The villas and the slave mode of production are in crisis, as in the central Tyrrhenian, during the second century AD, but -a difference of what happens in Etruria, Latium and Campania-in the extreme region of the Italy, especially the its southern part, from the fourth century AD seems to have a last period of prosperity. In Bruttii seems to exist in the fourth century AD a type of property that seems to still have the building of the villa as a driving force of an enormous expanse of land that, in the form of "social territory,"  combines the different and seculars economic and social histories of the production areas of the plains, the hills and mountains. This type of estate obtains these economic and social conditions just because the property is so large as to contain inside the capacity and capital to carry out simple and inexpensive crop rotations and a convenient vertical transhumance. Between the late sixth and early seventh A.D. will cease to exist - even in Bruttii who in recent decades will change the name in Calabria - the urban civilization and the ancient economy and begins a new phase for the social and economic relationships among people. Almost all the ancient cities are surely buried, the agricultural landscape for centuries deeply humanized again returns to be wild and is reclaimed from nature that recovers what had been removed from the work of men. Between the late sixth and early seventh century AD ends, forever, a world and another begins to form: the Middle Ages. The great complexity that, in recent decades, has been attributed by many scholars to late antiquity, we believe it is due, on the one hand, to the reduced availability of tools available to archaeologists and historians to reconstruct and read the sources and, on the other hand, the coexistence -within the same region, of the same territory- of a variety of modes of production and organization of social, political and cultural. In our opinion, it is assigned a complexity to an era in which, however, the agricultural landscapes,  the cities, the political, religious, social and economic think they have become simpler, less complex and, of course, less humanized.

An Italic bronze belt in the collection of the Louvre Museum contains an unusual feature: a mesh of bronze rings hangs from it, forming a mail skirt. The belt itself dates to the 4th century BC. As for the skirt, it has been suggested that it may be one of the earliest occurrences of mail, or possibly an ancestor of mail armour. However, closer examination demonstrates that the belt and skirt do not belong together and were married in the 19th century. The skirt does not concern mail armour, nor an ancestor. Analysis of similar finds shows that the skirt is an 8th-7th century BC hip ornament from a female burial in southern Italy.

IL MESTIERE DELLE ARMI.
ATTI DELL’INCONTRO DI STUDI, LECCE, 27 GIUGNO 2017.
Gianluca Tagliamonte Introduzione
Raimon Graells I Fabregat
Gianluca Tagliamonte Una corazza a tre dischi decorata «da Vulci»
Azzurra Scarci Gli schinieri dall’Italia meridionale tra VII e III secolo a.C.: una proposta tipologica
Andrea C. Montanaro La morte non mi appartiene. Riflessioni su alcuni contesti funerari di guerrieri aristocratici dall’area apula tra V e IV secolo a.C.
Raimon Graells I Fabregat El color de las corazas helenísticas
Vito Giannico Armi dal santuario di Atena a Castro

Dopo le recenti indagini nel contesto insediativo pluristratificato di Tegole, esplorato
per un’estensione di 1500 mq (Tunzi et alii 2012; Tunzi et alii 2014), il quadro
delle conoscenze sull’Eneolitico nella Puglia settentrionale si arricchisce di un nuovo
tassello proveniente dalle attività di archeologia preventiva connesse ai lavori per
il raddoppio della linea ferroviaria Caserta – Foggia, nella tratta Cervaro – Bovino:
infatti le ricerche, che hanno interessato il sito di Giardinetto (fig. 1), nel territorio
comunale di Orsara di Puglia, hanno permesso specifiche informazioni sugli aspetti
funerari di questa zona della Puglia, riferibili – come una parte delle testimonianze
di Tegole, distante circa 2 km a nord- a fasi alquanto iniziali dell’età del Rame.
Il toponimo Giardinetto identifica una località ubicata a circa 210 m s.l.m, al centro
di una zona pianeggiante circondata dai primi rilievi del Subappennino Dauno
e sulla sinistra dell’attuale corso del torrente Cervaro che, proveniente dal Vallo di
Bovino, prosegue in direzione E–NE verso la piana del Tavoliere.
A Giardinetto è stato possibile portare in luce un settore di m 55 x 15 circa, nel
quale la frequentazione eneolitica è risultata a tratti fortemente alterata dalle installazioni
di epoca daunia e, in alcuni casi, dai moderni lavori agricoli e dalle attività legate
alla realizzazione della ferrovia in esercizio.
Lo scavo stratigrafico ha portato all’individuazione di una necropoli a cremazione
costituita, al momento, da 23 recinti funerari (fig. 2), al cui interno sono state rinvenute
cremazioni secondarie, come prova la mancanza di tracce di combustione
in loco; altre cremazioni sono state rinvenute anche all’esterno dei recinti. Ulteriori
rinvenimenti di tracce riconducibili alla frequentazione umana eneolitica sono stati
effettuati nelle aree immediatamente circostanti.

The finds of the fragments of bronze vessels of the second half, in particular, possibly the third quarter of the 6th century BC, in the North Pontic area: Berezan, Olbia, Pantikapaion and Mirmekion – are very rare and are represented by the attachments of lebetes or basins of the types, widespread in Greece and South Italy, as well as a fragmented Etruscan infundibulum, which most likely found its way to Pantikapaion with Ionian colonists. In the late 6th – first half of the 5th century BC a series of bronze strainers and ladles reached Olbia and Scythian tumuli of the right bank of the Dnieper. Some of them were still in use, though being reworked, up to the second quarter of the 4th century BC. Being previously determined by Z.A. Bilimovich as the products of Etruscan workshops, these strainers were actually mainly manufactured by the workshops of Greece and South Italy. Only a small part of them could really be made in Etruria. In addition to the abovementioned categories of bronzeware, the Scythian burials of the first half – middle of the 5th century BC yielded albeit rarely, oinochoai, hydrias and hemispherical bowls, and in the second half of the century – podanipters. Noteworthy is almost lack of imported bronze drinking vessels.
Against this background stands out due to its artistic qualities and dimensions the bronze krater from Martonosha in the Middle Dnieper basin, the burial-mound located about 300 km north of Olbia, but not far from the sources of the South Bug, undeservedly forgotten by the modern researchers of the North Pontic area.
It is perfectly clear that the vessel from Martonosha is on a par with such unique and expensive articles as kraters from Vix and Trebenishte, which are considered by many researchers as diplomatic gifts, specially made for the barbaric elite. Both in Gaul and in the Central Balkans, the kraters found their way into burials not earlier than in the late 6th century BC, after about half a century or even more of use, being already antique objects. That means that either they were obtained as second-hand by their last owners, or they could be gifted to their predecessors, who had used them for a considerable time, before these antiquarian items were put into the graves of their descendants. We did not know how the matter was in the case of the burial from Martonosha (whether the krater was put in the burial at about the same time, in this case, shortly after manufacturing, or later), but a similar scenario cannot be ruled out.

La tomba a camera tardoromana di San Salvo
The traditional research about the relationships among the two banks of the Adriatic sea, based
mainly on the documentary sources, in the recent years has become wealthy of important data furnished
by the Archaeology. The geographical area interested by this study is the southern coastline of
Abruzzo and that of Molise. In particular, we introduce the Grave 71, a late roman underground burial
chamber discovered in Parco Archeologico del Quadrilatero in San Salvo.
The Grave 71 find comparisons in the Balkans and it proves the important commercial role developed
by the ancient and medieval settlement of San Salvo: a place of market and storage of alimentary
commodities destined, above all, to the other bank of the Adriatic sea.
The Grave 71 have been violated in the IX century and, after having been object of a ritual that
consisted in the killing of piglets, ha been surrounded by numerous burials.

Quintino Quagliati nacque a Rimini nel 1869 e si spense nel 1932 a Taranto per una terribile febbre malarica. Allievo del Carducci a Bologna e di Luigi Pigorini a Roma, nel 1908 fu nominato direttore del Museo archeologico di Taranto, cui seguì l'incarico di reggere la Soprintendenza alle Antichità e ai Monumenti della Puglia (1909) e di Basilicata (1916). Fu definito da Paolo Orsi “l’archeologo del piccone”.

il granchio frequentemente presente come tipo o simbolo nelle monete dei Brettii è stato interpretato come stemma e simbolo della "proiezione marina" dei commerci di un popolo in realtà molto legato all'entroterra. In realtà, tra i Bretti come ad Akragas e Cirene, è granchio d'acqua dolce, fluviale/ palustre, scelto nelle monete sin dal VI secolo a.C. (Kroton) come simbolo di fecondità e purezza/purificazione, legato alle divinità femminili acquatiche e lunare e, secondariamente, ad Herakles come divinità feconda. Una dea con testa fusa col granchio in un bronzo brettio è perciò ninfa locale e non Anfitrite