Italian Archaeology Research Articles

Settlement and Economy in Italy 1500 B. C. to A. D. 1500. Papers of the Fifth Conference of Italian Archaeology. By Neil Christie.

<i>Settlement and Economy in Italy 1500 B. C. to A. D. 1500. Papers of the Fifth Conference of Italian Archaeology</i>. By Neil Christie.

5th International Confernce of Italian Archaeology. "Settlement and Society 1500 B.C. - 1500 A.D.". Oxford. 11th-13th December 1992.

5th International Confernce of Italian Archaeology. "Settlement and Society 1500 B.C. - 1500 A.D.". Oxford. 11th-13th December 1992.

5th International Confernce of Italian Archaeology. "Settlement and Society 1500 B.C. - 1500 A.D.". Oxford. 11th-13th December 1992.

5th International Confernce of Italian Archaeology. "Settlement and Society 1500 B.C. - 1500 A.D.". Oxford. 11th-13th December 1992.

The Latest Work on the Export of Baetican Olive Oil to Rome and the Army

Over the last few years much work has been carried out on the export of olive oil from the province of Baetica to both Rome itself and the rest of the Roman Empire. The key for understanding the export traffic to Rome is the material from the Monte Testaccio in Rome, which is almost completely composed of amphorae from Baetica dating from the Imperial period, where a team of Spanish and Italian archaeologists have carried out two campaigns of excavations in 1989 an 1990 under my direction (Plate 1). This article also contains some other conlusions drawn from the work done in recent years by the team of Spanish archaeologists who work on the Monte Testaccio, investigating the topic of the Baetician oil trade.

New Developments and Technology in Printing

First of all, please put out of your mind the image of Fleet Street which represents but a small part of a very large industry of approximately £6bn a year, and growing. To begin with a little history: evidence of the first example of printing from movable type was discovered in 1908 by an Italian archaeologist on the island of Crete.

Graeme Barker and Richard Hodges (eds): Archaeology and Italian society. Prehistoric, Roman and medieval studies. Papers in Italian Archaeology. II BAR International Series 102. Oxford: BAR, 1981. 356 pp., 35 pls., 79 figs. £14.00.

Graeme Barker and Richard Hodges (eds): Archaeology and Italian society. Prehistoric, Roman and medieval studies. Papers in Italian Archaeology. II BAR International Series 102. Oxford: BAR, 1981. 356 pp., 35 pls., 79 figs. £14.00. - Volume 56 Issue 218

H. Mck. Blake, T. W. Potter &amp; D. B. Whitehouse (eds.): Papers in Italian archaeology I. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, Supplementary Series 41, 1978. 879 pp., in two parts, 113 pls., 55 figs., 1 pull-out map. £ 11.50.

H. Mck. Blake, T. W. Potter &amp; D. B. Whitehouse (eds.): Papers in Italian archaeology I. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, Supplementary Series 41, 1978. 879 pp., in two parts, 113 pls., 55 figs., 1 pull-out map. £ 11.50.

Aspects of the Circus at Lepcis Magna

By kind permission of the Department of Antiquities and of Professor Antonino Di Vita, Director of the Italian Mission, and with the financial support of the Society for Libyan Studies, the Oxford Craven Committee and the Cambridge Faculty Board of Classics, the authors spent three weeks in the early summer of 1974 studying the circus at Lepcis Magna. During the sixty years in which Italian archaeologists have been working at Lepcis, parts of the circus have been cleared or excavated on several different occasions. Work was begun in 1924-5 by R. Bartoccini at the monumental arch at the eastern end of the arena and on the seating on the north-east curve. He also uncovered the meta prima and the adjacent east end of the spina. Since 1960 a much larger area has been uncovered successively by E. Vergara-Caffarelli, F. Russo and A. Di Vita, as part of the larger project of clearing and restoring the whole of the amphitheatre-circus complex. Although work in most recent years has concentrated upon the complete clearance and restoration of the amphitheatre (which is cut into the hillside immediately south of the circus), two-thirds of the long south side of the circus has been revealed together with about half of the spina and most of the starting gates (carceres) at the west end.

The Archaic Favissa at Cyrene

ately enthused, the city was dyaKTrdovr (Pythian 5.81) and neologistically &3s?etrrol (Pythian 9-4). Some of the city's riches, mostly of a period later than that of Pindar, were recovered by Italian archaeologists in the earlier decades of this century; but the wealth and elegance of ancient Cyrene have now been more extensively documented by new discoveries in 1966 and 1968 during construction of a new village at Shahat (ancient Cyrene). An account of the 1966 excavations has been published in Libya Antiqua' and will not be repeated here, but ills. I and 2 locate the site, and the quarry where the deposit was found,2 for the present reader. The torso of a sphinx was the first object to be recovered, rapidly followed at depths of ca. I.ooi.6o m., by a Kouros torso, the fragments constituting Kore I, and Kore II. Close to the tumbled rock masses in the middle of the quarry were found the upper half of a fluted column of white marble and a complete and remarkably preserved Ionic capital (pl. 5, fig. i) which belonged to it. The latter lay at a depth of ca. .oo00 m. and was surrounded by numerous building blocks, none of them in situ, but all apparently dumped in this convenient hollow in the ground. Between the Ionic capital and the western limit of the excavation bedrock formed a level layer ca. 1.30 m. below the surface, and immediately on top of it were found large numbers of rectangular bronze sheets, most of them pierced with nail holes. There was also a number of lead building clamps, of swallow-tail shape, and some long and narrow strips of lead which appear to have been cut from thick lead sheeting. All of these objects lay beneath the dumped building blocks. At the same depth of ca. 1.30 m. were found two remarkable bronze plaques with embossed decoration, of which one is fragmentary and depicts two wrestlers, and the other, complete, is a Gorgoneion. Bedrock provided a vertical limit to the excavation over most of the area; but in the eastern corner of the quarry, where the Kouros and Korai were found, the bedrock was missing, and it was necessary to dig to a depth of ca. 2.60 m. before natural clay was encountered. The limits of the archaic deposit were established on N, E and s in 1966; in June of 1968, the motor-track and water-tank were removed and the limit of the deposit to the w also defined. More importantly, in the small pocket of earth beneath the water-tank there came to light another fragmentary bronze plaque, again depicting a Gorgoneion, and, miraculously, the head of the Sphinx. A short distance beyond the N edge of the quarry, on high ground that appears to have suffered much erosion, remains were found of an ancient construction: walls forming two sides of a rectangular (probably square) edifice or enclosure. The walls are ca. 1.20o m. broad and consist of blocks laid in a double row so as to form outer and inner faces:

British Archaeology in Libya, 1943–70

After the victory of El-Alamein, a military administration was set up in Libya to act as a caretaker government until a peace-treaty should be concluded. This administration assumed, as part of its responsibilities, the care of the country's antiquities. In Cyrenaica the staff of the Italian Soprintendenza had been withdrawn; in Tripolitania, under Dr. G. Pesce, the Soprintendenza remained in operation. At the instance of Sir Mortimer (then Brigadier) Wheeler, Major J. B. Ward-Perkins, who was serving with the Eighth Army, was appointed Acting Adviser in Archaeology to the British Military Administration. In the summer of 1943 he made a number of recommendations as to the safeguarding of the antiquities, and in August 1944 Major C. G. C. Hyslop was appointed as Antiquities Officer for the two Libyan territories, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, under British control. The British Antiquities Officer worked in close conjunction with the Italian Soprintendenza at Tripoli, but in Cyrenaica he had to rely almost entirely on his own resources. Maintenance and reorganization were first priorities but Hyslop also found time to issue an English guidebook to Cyrenaica. Major D. E. L. Haynes who followed Hyslop as Antiquities Officer late in 1945 produced a similar volume on Tripolitania, which after two subsequent editions and revisions commissioned by the Libyan Government in 1955 and 1959, is still the standard guide-book to the classical antiquities. Haynes was succeeded by Goodchild in September 1946, followed by Morgan in 1948 and Johns in 1950. The main responsibility of the Antiquities Department continued to be the care of the important coastal sites excavated by Italian archaeologists between 1912 and 1942, but the presence of British forces with personnel trained in desert travel and also with facilities such as transport, stores, camping-equipment, made it possible to carry out archaeological field work, especially in the pre-desert areas.

Italian Archaeology - Paul Mackendrick: The Mute Stones Speak. The Story of Archaeology in Italy. Pp. xiii+369; 171 illustrations. London: Methuen, 1962. Cloth, 35s. net.

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The Cemeteries of Cyrene

The existence of the tombs at Cyrene, and their magnificence, have been known for many years. In the last century a number of scholars wrote descriptions of them, and some excavated here and there among them, while in the last forty years many of the better-preserved monuments have been cleared, though not published. Until the Italian occupation of Cyrenaica in 1912, and indeed for some time following it, the settled conditions necessary for a patient investigation did not exist; and after that date the skill and energy of Italian archaeologists were directed mainly to the excavation and study of the ancient city itself. So it is that no serious study of their history has yet been attempted. The first requisite for such a study is a summary of the material available; the object of the present paper is to provide a preliminary classification of the tombs, a catalogue of them with maps, and a conspectus of the work already done, which may together serve as a basis for future study. The numeration of the individual tombs described in the following pages is that given in the detailed catalogue (pp. 22–43), where the letters N, E, S, and W refer to the North, East, South, and West cemeteries respectively (Figs. 1–7 and Pl. I). The bibliographical abbreviations used in the footnotes will be found in the section on previous work on the tombs (pp. 6–9).

The Tripolitanian Gebel: Settlement of the Roman Period around Gasr ed-Dauun

This paper summarises the results of work carried out during the years 1949–51 in the eastern Gebel of Tripolitania. The area had been visited, and some of the sites noted, by nineteenth-century travellers and by Italian archaeologists between the wars, and the adjacent plateau of Tarhuna has been the subject of a recent paper by R. G. Goodchild. My work was complementary to his, and I have not reproduced the details of information so lately set out except where they were immediately necessary.I was able to spend long periods in the territory while holding the Scholarship in Classical Studies at the British School at Rome and a Research Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and I am deeply indebted both to the School and to my college for their generous support in unusual circumstances: in particular the latter, for providing a truck which carried me over fifteen thousand miles in difficult country and for a generous grant towards the cost of illustrating this paper.

The Neolithic Cultures of South-East Italy

South-east Italy, from the spur to the heel of Italy's boot, forms a natural geographic and cultural unit, separated from the Balkans by the Adriatic yet joined to them by the same sea. It is an area of plain and plateau bounded to the west and north by the Apennines, which come down to the sea at the Gulf of Taranto and again north of the Gargano peninsula.Considerably more material for the study of the neolithic cultures in this area has been found since T. E. Peet drew attention to their interest nearly forty years ago (II). Yet while the main kinds of pottery are recognised, positive evidence for their succession is still scarce. This is chiefly due to the lack of fully stratigraphic digging, as well as to a tendency to regard the objects found on any single site as ipso facto contemporary with one another or at least as due to a continuous occupation. Some confusion is probably also caused by the number of separate stations all usually called ‘Matera.’ Even so the main phases are now distinguishable, and the chief differences of opinion are regarding the extent to which the characteristic range of pottery of each of these, with all that that implies, continued alongside of the innovations.The following account based on war-time reading, and brief visits to Matera museum and a number of sites, will stress the view that there was fairly complete replacement: in this and the resulting division into three distinct periods, tentatively indicated by Rellini in 1929 (14c), it goes beyond the views of most Italian archaeologists, as well as previous English resumes. In particular Laviosa-Zambotti in her recent important study of Italian cultures and their relations with Central Europe and the Balkans (8b), while admitting that the various wares are due to a series of influences from outside, concludes that they are truly associated and therefore largely synchronous. This may be due in part to her leaning toward ‘short’ chronologies elsewhere. However, particularly in view of J. S. P. Bradford's remarkable crop-site discoveries (2), it seems worthwhile to set out the existing evidence for a more elaborate scheme, to be tested by future excavations.

Ethiopian Rock-hewn Churches

While engaged in locust investigations in Ethiopia between 1942 and 1945 I found ample opportunity to indulge my favourite hobby—the study of Christian architecture and antiquities. I knew, before coming to the country, that Ethiopia was little-explored and probably a fruitful field. I had heard of the pre-Christian monuments at Aksum, and of the extraordinary rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, both of which have been long (if not widely) known. But in the end the antiquities that came to light far surpassed my expectations, and I had the satisfaction of visiting many remarkable monuments, which have rarely been seen by Europeans, hidden away in the mountain fastnesses of the northern highlands. One or two Italian archaeologists had, it is true, begun to pay attention to some of these buildings, but I believe no connected account of the early Ethiopian style of architecture has yet been attempted, I propose in this summary article to confine myself mainly to the internal history of the monuments, only touching upon the more difficult question of the ultimate sources of the style.

Research Items

THE SAVIGNANO STATUETTE.—M. Raymond Vaufrey in T. 36, Nos. 5.6 of L'Anthropologie, discusses the possible dating of the female statuette in serpentine discovered at Savignano, in the province of Modena, northern Italy, some three years ago, and now in the Museum of Ethnography and Prehistory of Rome. The question is of some importance in relation to the occurrence of different phases of the palpeolithic period in the Po valley; but in default of stratigraphic evidence, it depends entirely upon morphological considerations. The statuette is 225 mm. high, and, if it be of paloeolithic age, is the largest of these figures yet discovered. Its material is presumably of local origin, as similar serpentine occurs in the neighbouring Appenines of Emilia. The superficial details of the sculpture are much worn. In form the statuette is an elongated ellipse with the arms pressed close against the body; the legs join, the oblique position of the line of division suggesting the action of walking; the feet are not indicated. The head is a prolongation of the body without indication of a neck, and is pointed, the general appearance being as of a head-dress falling over the shoulders. The breasts, abdomen, and thighs are prominent but beautifully sculptured. The genitalia are not indicated. The statuette is markedly steatopygous. Italian archaeologists are not in agreement as to its probable age, one school represented by M. P. Graziozi attributing it to the Aurignacian, while M. U. Antonielli considers it neolithic. The statuette, however, strikingly resembles those of Barma Grande. The position of the arms clasped on the breasts is characteristic of the paloeolithic type, for in statuettes of later date the hands support the breasts. Notwithstanding the absence hitherto of evidence of the Aurignacian in the Po valley, its occurrence on other sites in Italy supports the attribution to this period.

A New Portrait of Plato

From the Renaissance onwards efforts have been made to discover the portrait of the thinker whom even his contemporary Isocrates called the ‘prince of philosophers.’ At that period it was believed that it had been discovered in a venerable long-bearded male type, a view which Fulvius Ursinus thought to be supported by a gem inscription. According to this there was no longer anything to prevent the ascription of the name Plato to a whole series of Olympian heads, now acknowledged as being of the type of Dionysus or of Hermes. And when the bronze bust of the Indian Dionysus was found at Herculaneum in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was greeted with enthusiasm as the most expressive portrait of the great intellectual hero, and passed as such in popular works right down to the end of the nineteenth century. Even in the beginning of this century an Italian archaeologist tried to save the name of Plato, and proposed to explain the bust as a combination of Plato and Dionysus.