The summer of 2012 marked a period of transition in our research on the remains of the Roman villa at San Felice. While excavation continued for the eighth season on the villa site, the work was more limited and focused on examining small areas that could expand our information on parts of the villa that had been discovered in previous years. At the same time, a field survey was undertaken to the west of the Basentello river, examining the broader context of this Imperial estate, as well as trying to understand the process of cultural change brought about by the Roman presence in this region of southern Italy.
Although certain features and aspects of the villa still remain to be investigated through excavation, a greater emphasis in future will be placed on the broader research questions that are the focus of the regional survey.
EXCAVATION
A key feature identified in the villa at San Felice was a peristyle, its central area marked by surrounding columns and with corridors around all four sides. The third phase of the villa's construction (late first/early second centuries ad) saw the insertion of small dry-masonry walls in and around this corridor, with the result that it was subdivided into smaller spaces. In 2011 the excavations within this part of the corridor revealed what appeared to be the praefurnium of a kiln. This was excavated fully this year.
The kiln was in the southwest corner of the corridor of the peristyle, built up against the south and west walls of the original structure. The construction started by digging down to the bedrock, after which the side and back walls of the kiln were built of tile and mortar. The kiln (comparable to type II/B in Cuomo di Caprio's typology (Reference Cuomo di Caprio2007: 524)) is c. 2.3 m long and is 1.9 m wide on its exterior, although the internal width of the combustion chamber was less than half of that. Three piles of roughly square tiles were preserved on each side of the kiln, with the upper ones set at an angle, suggesting that originally the tiles continued upwards to create vaulted ribs. Between these tile structures, about 0.5 m above the bedrock, were ledges that would have supported the floor structure of the firing chamber above the firing box. Unfortunately the kiln was destroyed after its last use, and the fill from the structure contained only rubble. There was no burnt material preserved within the firing chamber, possibly indicating that the kiln stood abandoned after its last use, and that charcoal and ash had been washed away by rain; nor were objects recovered that might have been made in the kiln. As a result the chronology of the use of the kiln is known poorly.
A second area of interest was to the southeast of the peristyle. In general the areas to the east of the peristyle seem to have been associated with agricultural or industrial activities in both phase 3 and in the post-occupational phase. South of the area excavated in 2011, we found further evidence of hearths built on one or two tegulae in the period after the initial abandonment of the villa. We have suggested previously (McCallum et al., Reference McCallum, vanderLeest, Veal, Taylor, Cooney, Brown and Munro2011: 64–9) that this area might have continued to be used for the production of lime and pottery, and by those who were tending herds in the area, and that the hearths may relate to the latter activity.
Below the level of the hearths, we recovered three well-made basins set into a solid opus signinum floor. The largest of these was circular (diameter 1.3 m; depth 0.9 m) and was constructed from the lower part of a large dolium. Adjacent to this were two smaller rectangular basins (c. 0.85 × 1.0 × 0.77 m). The sides of these basins were made of opus signinum, while the bottoms were made of small rectangular bricks. It is possible that these bricks originally were covered with a waterproof mortar. Where the floor in this room reaches the side walls, the opus signinum was built up to create a lip that would have directed liquids away from the walls and towards the basins. Since the entire complex has not been uncovered yet, the exact nature of the industrial activity originally undertaken here is not yet clear, and the processing of wine, olive oil, tanning and fulling are all possibilities.
SURVEY
In July and August 2012 a team of Canadian, American and Italian archaeologists initiated an extensive field survey of an area of c. 180 km2 to the west of the Basentello river in the territories of Genzano di Lucania and Irsina (Fig. 1). The survey territory, which is roughly defined by the Basentello in the east and north, the SS96 bis in the south, and the SS169 in the west, includes a substantial fluvial terrace to the west of the Basentello, and a series of highly eroded, low sedimentary hills and plateaux, of which the largest is Monte Serico (which rises to 590 m above sea level).
Fig. 1. The survey area, showing key features and sites.
In total, c. 31 km2 of land was surveyed and 55 sites were found, of which 40 date from the Palaeolithic to the medieval period, while the other fifteen are more recent. Each site was divided into collection units of 0.25 ha (a total of 233 being examined), and samples of pottery and building material were collected systematically using 3 m diameter circles in order to standardize artifact density values within each collection unit.
While our results are clearly preliminary, they allow us to present a number of working hypotheses about settlement trends. The scatters at ancient sites range in size from less than 0.10 to c. 13.0 ha, and the sites are located on all types of terrain (Table 1). Many of the sites were occupied over multiple periods, and some show evidence for continuous occupation from the Early Iron Age through to the late antique period. As observed also in earlier archaeological investigations at Monte Serico (Ciriello, Sodo and Cossalter, Reference Ciriello, Sodo, Cossalter, Bettelli, De Faveri and Osanna2007: 315–18), there is evidence for nucleated settlement between the ninth and sixth centuries bc, where we have identified a 13 ha continuation of the ancient settlement well beyond the confines of the archaeologically protected zone established in the 1990s. Moreover, the date range, density and spatial coverage of black gloss ceramics recovered at Monte Serico suggests that this large site may have continued to be a nucleated centre of some significance down to the early third century bc. Throughout the survey zone, our data suggest that the beginning of dispersed rural settlement can be dated to the fourth century bc, and many of these sites continued into the Imperial period. These sites ranged in size from 0.15 to 4.5 ha, although their exact nature cannot be understood clearly from the surface evidence. The scatters from these sites contained a wide range of ceramic material, including slipped fine-wares such as black gloss ware, cook-wares, and various storage containers, ranging from small amphorae to dolia. We did not recover any luxury material that might suggest the presence of a residential villa in the territory surveyed, although it should be noted that one of the sites studied, to the south of Genzano di Lucania, and which is known locally as ‘Festula’, has produced a rather large marble statue of Ceres (Battaglino, Reference Battaglino2010: 23–6) and local informants note that they have collected pieces of marble on the surface in the past. A collection of iron age (six) and Roman (nine) sites along the Fiumarella, most dating from at least the third century bc and four continuing into the sixth century ad, suggests the presence of an ancient road, possibly linking these sites to Bantia, in whose territory they may lie. There was a decline in the number of Roman sites in the third and fourth centuries ad, although those sites that continued appear to have increased in size and population, based on the size of the scatters and the artifact densities noted. The survey will continue in the summer and autumn of 2013.
Table 1. Sites found during the survey.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dott. Luigi La Rocca and Dott.ssa Francesca Radina from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia, Dott. Antonio de Siena and Dott.ssa Rosanna Ciriello from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Basilicata, Dott.ssa Roberta Cascino of the British School at Rome, and the staff of the centro operativo of the Soprintendenza at Gravina in Puglia. We should also like to express our gratitude to Nicola Vertone, mayor of Banzi, for hosting our survey team during July and August 2012. Financial support has come from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant and from our universities. We continue to benefit greatly from the work done by specialist members of our team, including Franco Taccogna (surveyor), Sally Cann (illustrator), and Dr Peter Wigand and Anthony Taylor (environmental archaeology). The work in the field relies heavily on our field assistants, Jim McCaw, Emily Redden and John MacDougall, and the many students who participate in our field schools. Finally we should like to acknowledge the contributions of our research collaborators, Dr Tracy Prowse (McMaster University), Dr Maureen Carroll (University of Sheffield) and Dr Adam Hyatt (University of Michigan).
