The Campanian agrarian systems of the late Copper-Early Bronze Age (ca. 4550-3850 cal BP): A long-lasting agrarian management tradition before the Pomici di Avellino eruption

Abstract

In the Piana Campana (Southern Italy), the repeated and sometimes devastating volcanic activities of the Somma-Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei, spread over a wide area and over centuries, led archaeologists to the recovery of detailed data about the past environment and human occupation during the Late Holocene. Settlements, burials, landscape and agrarian infrastructures (fields, tracks, wells, etc.) show an intense and continuous human presence since at least late Neolithic times (ca. 6.2 ka cal BP) also confirmed in the pollen diagrams. The investigations conducted at Gricignano d’Aversa/US Navy support site by the Soprintendenze of the Italian Ministry of Culture from 1995 to 2005 allow us to analyze positive and negative agrarian traces, mainly consisting in shallow gullies and banks, plough furrows, plough-marks, and cart-tracks and cart-ruts bottoms. A discussion of the methodology to be applied to agrarian traces is developed. The resulting pattern shows the regularity of the Copper and Early Bronze Age field systems during the time span between ca. 4550 and 3850 cal BP (resp. Agnano Monte Spina and Avellino eruptions). The Phlegraean eruptions occurring between these two major events, probably originating from Astroni, did not have a disrupting effect, anyway probably forcing a re-arrangement of the field system, and possibly also of settlements. The preserved archaeological deposits of the Piana Campana are starting to reveal a still underdeveloped potential in terms of ancient landscape reconstruction.