RICERCA ITALIANA     

Greeks and Indigenous people on the lower Tyrrhenian coast: historical-literary sources, archaeological evidences, geo-archaeometrical analysis.

Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II"

Abstract

The relationships between Greek and indigenous world, characterizing the Magna Grecia historical and archaeological events, are the main theme of the project. The reading of these relationships, occupying a long period of time, from the archaic age to the Romanization, will be focused in a territorial context taken as a representative sample.
The chosen area is part of the Calabrian Tyrrhenian coast, between the ancient cities of Temesa e Terina, in the modern Nocera Terinese area (Cz). The choice of this territorial context is due to the rich historical-literary documentation and the large potentialities of the archaeological resources, yet to be defined and investigated.
The four Research Units taking part in the project purpose to deal with a wide and complete analysis of the Nocera territory, using both the territorial research data and the archaeological ones (survey and aimed excavations in the urbanised Pian della Tirena site), the interdisciplinary supports, as geology, geo-physics, archaeometrics analysis, anthropological analysis, archaeo-zoological and paleo-botanical analysis. Only a global approach to the territory, based on really interdisciplinary methodologies, can allow a reconstruction attempt of the settling dynamics, of the occupation and organization forms in the area, understanding all the historical, cultural, environmental, socio-economic factors, etc. The realization of an informatics database, supported by a GIS platform, will support this territory reading model, allowing the collecting and structuring of all the documentary data and their use and query through the maps. <<<

Principal Investigator

Giovanna GRECO Università degli Studi di NAPOLI "Federico II"

Research Objectives

The research has the purpose to study the relationships between the indigenous world and the Greek one, along the Tyrrhenian coast, from archaic age to the Romanization, with a territorial sample analysis.
These problems are the focus of a very wide and dense of contributions debate with various methodologies and analysis instruments, leading to different reading and historical reconstruction levels.
Moving from the actual knowledge, the project aims at developing a research program on a more aimed methodological basis, with a direct and finalised approach at the datum territory.
The specified area will permit to face the starting problem working on a representative sample, and planning the right research strategies.
In particular, the foreseen purposes are:

- Total analysis of territorial sample, to rebuild the essential lines of the relationships between Greek and local world;

- Individuation of ways and forms of these relationships, through the scenery of the settling events;

- Recognition and interpretation of the "territory" as a privileged observation-point, in particular as a complex stratification of information and historical, archaeological, paleo-environmental documentation;

- Geologic and environmental context study;

- Definable processes analysis: ancient landscape characters; territory occupation models; interaction with the landscape, connection with the environmental resources; interaction between sites distribution and economic processes, relationships between scattered on the territory sites and urbanised centres;

- Analysis and study of the territorial sample material culture, with quantitative and qualitative considerations, comparison between findings coming from different archaeological contexts;

- Individuation of local productions on archaeometrics basis, definition of formal typologies and distributive analysis;

- Interaction between "intra-site" and "inter-site" data;

- Collected results evaluation in a possible regional perspective;

- Elaboration and experimental study of a territorial and archaeological research model, structured on different levels, with the purpose to emphasize and create collaboration between different knowledge and competences in the same work phases;

- Development of collaborating interdisciplinary synergies, aimed at the planned research model purposes;

- Elaboration of historical-archaeological and thematic cartography;

- Elaboration of a database of the different historic, archaeological, geological sources, etc.;

- Realization of a GIS platform aimed at the management, consultation and cartographic restitution of the collected data. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Most recent ways of approaching the problem of settling in ancient world, have stressed the importance of territorial analysis, done with the instruments of survey and the precious contributions of landscape archaeology. In this way, the reading of the different kinds of occupation has been enriched with new contents, which helped to acknowledge the need of enlarging the picture of reconstructive elements, not only limited to archaeological data. The rich bibliography about the subject is a clear proof of the multiple experiences of last decades and of how wide is the field of research.
The coast line between Elea-Velia (Sa) and the gulf of Lamezia (Cz) is a very rich field of inquiry for investigating the relationships between Greeks and native people. Besides the very rich data of literary tradition, archaeological research has revealed, in the past years, some particularly interesting data about the distribution of native sites by the coast, in the areas of Palinuro, Sapri, Maratea, Tortora, Scalea, Marcellina. Some of them flourished by the beginning of sixth century B.C. (La Petrosa of Scalea, San Bartolo of Marcellina), and reached the top by the second half of that same century. The commercial bent, in addition to the interests of Sibari and Elea to the north, seems to have encouraged the growth of these native groups, of whom some sections of houses and necropolis have been identified.
Also the southern coast line is characterized by interesting sites, such as Serra Aiello, where some finds of the Iron Age have been found, or Campora San Giovanni, in the area of Pian della Tirena (Nocera Terinese), Sambiase, up to the gulf of Lamezia, with S. Eufemia Vetere.
It is right in this district, between river Savuto to the North, where the position of ancient Temesa is commonly placed, and S. Eufemia Vetere to the South, the presumed site of Terina, that a new area is to be found, still to be analysed from a territorial and settling point of view, with regards to the initial problems of the project.
The available data are not enough, if compared with the importance and potentiality of this coast area that is known in the literary tradition as "sinus ingens terinaeus" (Plinio, N.H. III, 71-72).
The archaeological documents are few and occasional compared to the literary ones, which are much more rich and full of details, and there is a lack of essential data to describe an up to date situation of the Greek and native presence in the area of Nocera Terinese.
It is enough to remember that the latest works on field go back to the second half of the Eighties of 20th century, as it appears in the first works of assessment produced during the conference "Temesa and its territory" in 1982 and, later, in the project "South of Velia", whose results were published in 1990. In those occasions, the scientific debate was concentrated upon the problem of the right position of Temesa and Terina, while the territorial context in which these two sites, in a strict relation, respectively, to the native and Greek world, are to be placed, was left behind.
On the other side, the archaeological excavations which were held in Pian della Tirena, in the hearth of the Nocerino district, by the Soprintendenza Archeologica della Calabria and by the University of Naples "Federico II" during the Eighties, have revealed the first important evidences of an urban settlement, which can be dated back to the Greek age, and therefore to be put in relation with the "Brettii" period. The evidences of the archaic age are few instead, restricted to clay fragments, which were found during excavations, and to some architectural terracotta.
In 2004 the University of Naples "Federico II" has resumed the archaeological survey in Pian della Tirena, even if with a modest budget. Drilling has showed up some more tracks of the settlement of the Greek age, with a section of two houses placed beside a road, in the central part of the plan, while a section of an house dating the Imperial age, characterised by a mosaic floor, was explored in the western part. At present times, then, it is possible to recognize at least two settlement units, one of Greek age and the other of Roman times, which is absolutely new for the plan, where the only clues of the presence of people during the Imperial age, so far, were some surface materials and some old findings by P. Orsi.
In order to reconstruct all the stages of the occupation of Pian della Tirena, then a lot of elements are still lacking, as well as there are not enough data about the organization of each settlement unit, of the architectural characteristics of public and private houses, to give the possibility of a better definition of the profile of the community which settled down in the plane.
On the same way, also the material culture of Pian della Tirena is far away to be broadly known, with the exception of the clay fragments published by N. Valenza Mele in 1991, coming from his activity of drilling.
Information about the territory where Pian della Tirena is situated is also poor, consisting mainly of two only surveys held during the Eighties by the same University of Naples "Federico II". The preliminary results of these surveys have showed up the strong presence of "sites" going back to a period between 4th and 3rd century B.C., at the same time of the development of settlement units in Pian della Tirena, compared to a much more limited quantity of data of the archaic age. The analysis of the relationship between these sites distributed on the territory between 4th and 3rd century, and the following evidence of the Roman age, still needs more attention, especially in terms of continuity and/or addition, of relation with the environment, of economic rules. At the same time, the finding of necropolis in the locality of Serra Aiello, of structures likely to be associated with religious functions in Campora S. Giovanni, while reopening the debate about the presence of people during the archaic age in the territory, they confirm that the problem of placing in the right position Temesa has to be reconsidered in the territorial perspective and not just in the one of the urban unit of Pian della Tirena, which is by the way not well known in its oldest stages.
Also these new data suggest the opportunity of starting a broader research with different methodologies, in order to describe the different aspects of the historic topography of the district, such as the same relationship between the native Temesa with its contacts with the Greek world, and the Tempsa of the Roman age.
In the end, it is worth to underline the lack of auxiliary geological, paleo-environmental, archaeozoological support in the study of the territory, essential for an appropriate understanding of the settling process in the area we are examining. We can only report some geophysical investigations and well loggings held on Pian della Tirena during the Eighties, and which allowed to recognize some areas where the presence of structures is likely to be proved, confirming once again the need for new and wide exams based on modern diagnostic instruments and technologies. <<<