download article as .pdf: Caulonia tra la metà dell’ VIII e gli inizi del VII sec. a.C. Nuovi dati dalle ricerche in località S. Marco nord-est
.
This paper focuses on a group of potsherds coming from the excavations conducted by the University of Florence in the area known as ‘S. Marco nord-est’, in the archaeological park of Monasterace Marina. All these finds can be dated within the second half of the VIII BC and referred to productions and morphologies chronologically connected with two different and very significant historical periods: the frequentation of the inner land of the Ionian coast in the years that immediately precede Greek colonization, that is to say from 750 to 730 BC, and the period of the foundation of the new apoikia, during the last two decades of the VIII century BC. The analogies between these artifacts and the series of similar finds known from the Tarantine gulf allow us to propose some important considerations on the role of the Capo Cocinto and of the area of the future Caulonia in the precolonial period; on the other side, the presence of a conspicuous group of Thapsos potsherds testifies that the foundation of the city has to be posed in the last quarter of the VIII century BC, in parallel with those of the other Achaean poleis of the gulf of Taranto.