Figure 35 - uploaded by Myles Mccallum
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
Since 2004 a team from Mount Allison and Saint Mary’s Universities has undertaken
archaeological investigation, which includes survey, geophysical prospection, and
excavation, of the Roman villa site at San Felice. Evidence suggests that the site and
the nearby vicus site at Vagnari were part of a rather large imperial estate in the
Basentello Rive...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... has yet to be fully excavated as it fell at the edge of one of our trenches. This coin is an as of Claudius minted between ad 41 and 54, depicting a bare-headed Claudius facing left on the obverse and an armed and helmeted Minerva, brandishing a spear in her right hand and carrying a shield on her left arm, advancing to the right on the reverse (fig. 35). 63 The obverse reads "TI CLAUDIUS CAESAR AUG TR P IMP P P", while the reverse reads "S-C" across fields. The fourth is a small silver coin, probably a diobol (1.39 g) that was likely minted at Thourioi in the fourth century bc. The coin was recovered during the first season of excavation at the site (2005) from a fill layer towards ...
Similar publications
ABSTRACT
Fluvial dynamics of the river Cher in the St Amand Montrond district : natural evolution and impact of alluvial extraction.
The consequences of the extraction of alluvia from the bed of the Cher, south of Bruère-Allichamps, are examined from the morphological and environmental standpoints. The environment of the valley is altered on a di...
Citations
... To demonstrate the utility of resilience thinking in this historical and archaeological context, a case study in the Basentello Valley of central Southern Italy is illustrative. This region, the subject of several surveys and excavations [10][11][12][13][14], highlights the benefits and limitations of resilience thinking for landscape archaeologists and ancient historians by the nature of its location and archaeological record. Far removed from the extraordinary urban landscapes of Central and Northern Italy, the Basentello region provides a predominantly rural example where the contraction of social complexity following Roman political fragmentation appears more localized and less directly influenced by Lombard and Byzantine urban culture between c. AD 300 and 800. ...
... Understanding resilience in this context is therefore specific to the rural world. Additionally, excavations at the Roman vicus of Vagnari [11,36] and the villa of San Felice [12,37] add tighter chronological control while providing detailed evidence through which to interpret strategies for resilience. ...
Archaeological data for the transformation of late Roman rural landscapes in Southern Italy over the sixth to eighth centuries AD are often meagre. This record often provides little explanatory power in the context of understanding the collapse of Roman political and economic hegemony and the framework for the regeneration of these relationships in the early medieval countryside. Resilience thinking offers a robust suite of heuristics to help guide both method and theory in understanding the key socio-environmental relationships involved in this transformative process based on limited material evidence. Through insights gained from developing a panarchic perspective of the Basentello landscape between AD 300 and 800, both capacities for and strategies of resilience to landscape-scale shocks and stressors emerge as key patterns in this collapse process. To explain how these patterns emerge, resilience thinking employs narratives from complexity science by framing landscapes as self-organizing complex adaptive systems. It is through appreciating this complexity that archaeologists can revolutionize how we understand landscape-scale transformations, the role of resilience in landscape history and, more broadly, the nature of societal collapse.
Pompey owned numerous properties in Italy, but except for a few residential villas little is known of their location or economic function. However, two amphora stamps have been attributed to him, which show that he was involved in the manufacture of amphorae, and probably in the production of the wine. Four tile stamps, found in the vicinity of Gravina in Puglia and at a villa at San Gilio in the upper Bradano valley, can also be attributed to Pompey for reasons discussed in detail in this paper. Since they were found in locations close to a drove road, it is inferred that Pompey had invested in properties which could be used as pasture for transhumant sheep. The circumstances in which he acquired the estate near Gravina are discussed, and it is suggested that it fell within the territory of Silvium and is likely to have been acquired by him after the War of Spartacus in which the settlement was destroyed. It is also suggested that the estate was bought by Octavian in the sale of Pompey's properties, which was still ongoing in 44 BC.
PDF available online OPEN ACCESS: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14614103.2023.2282866
INVESTIGATIONS AT THE ROMAN IMPERIAL ESTATE AT VAGNARI, PUGLIA (COMUNE DI GRAVINA IN PUGLIA, PROVINCIA DI BARI, REGIONE PUGLIA) - Volume 87 - Maureen Carroll
A second season of excavation was conducted in 2015 at Gerace (Enna province, Sicily). In the small late Roman villa of ca. 370/375 ad identified by earlier work, the largest room, in the west wing, was found to have a floor of opus signinum, but the west corridor, in contrast to the mosaic-paved south corridor, had a floor of beaten earth throughout its life. The villa may never have been completely finished, even though occupation debris suggests it was frequented for much of the fifth century. Of the small freestanding bath-house at a higher level alongside it, only a single heated pool had survived later demolition. In its place two storerooms were inserted deep into the earth for efficient insulation. In the fire that destroyed the villa ca. 450/530 ad, a date supported by C14 analysis, the contents of these stores were carbonized: a huge cache of thousands of seeds, principally barley but also including wheat, grapes, and legumes, was uncovered there. The much larger, earlier store-building to the east, provisionally dated to ca. 325/350 and destroyed ca. 360, is now shown to have been a basilican structure. Three earlier phases of building have been detected below it; there is also a sherd of Attic Black Figure pottery, attesting activity at Gerace ca. 500 bc. A further 37 examples of stamps on roof tiles were discovered, including a single example from a hitherto unrecorded die; they were all part of the production, probably on site, of Philippianus, the likely owner of the Gerace estate in the late fourth century. After the fire of 450/530 ad, early Byzantine structures (seventh century?), much disturbed by the plough, occupied part of the site of the late Roman villa.
