Tag Archives: Late Antiquity

(Italiano) Il costume funerario tardoantico e altomedievale della Basilicata alla luce di vecchi scavi e nuove acquisizioni

Author: F.C. Papparella

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In recent decades, Basilicata has been affected by a number of stratigraphic investigations carried out as part of preventive archeology activities and critical editions of excavations carried out in the past. The funerary area in their territory showed a strongly rural organization, leading to hypothesize the presence of vici, as in the case of Il Finocchiaro and Tempa Rossa, Masseria Massari. The study of the sepulchral contexts and of the current grave goods leads to arguments on the actual Christianization of death in the late antique and early medieval age, revealing an important commission of pagan gestures and rituals.

La Valle dopo gli antichi. La campagna di scavi del 2019. Parte I

Authors: V. Caminneci, L. Piepoli, G. Scicolone

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We present some archaeological investigations carried out in Agrigento on Summer 2019, within the project entitled “The Valley after the ancients”. The aim is to reconstruct the post-antique phases of the Valley of the Temples, including the most recent history until the public opening of the cultural site. The digs have been carried out in some points selected in order to achieve the diachronic investigation. Following an interdisciplinary research, through the indirect sources as well as the archaeological ones, a careful review of the known data has been accompanied by the study of archive documents and especially of the old photographs, which portrayed the lost landscape of the Valley of the Temples.

La tarda antichità nell’entroterra occidentale di Agrigento. Una proposta di lettura dell’assetto insediativo a partire dal Sistema Informativo Territoriale (SIT)

Autore: A. Pensallorto

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The digitalisation and the analysis of data coming from the rural settlement of the western hinterland of Agrigento, show that settlement pattern is characterized by typical phenomena for the Late Antiquity: the exponential increase in the number of sites and their tendency to create system. This is particularly clear in those sectors with a greatest agricultural potential within the whole territory, such as the areas of Siculiana, Eraclea Minoa and Raffadali. The development of these large rural districts may be read as the symptom of a deep change in the ways and in the places of agricultural production. This phenomenon can be related to the socio-economic changes that were progressively triggered by the foundation of Constantinople and the conquest of Africa by Vandals.

Il cosiddetto macellum-forum di Durazzo: nuovi dati sulla costruzione di uno spazio circolare

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Centrally located inside the perimeter of the ancient city walls of Dyrrhachium, the remains of the so-called macellum-forum today form one of the major archaeological sites of the modern Albanian town of Durres. Probably erected as a commercial square between the end of the 5th and the first few decades of the 6th century AD, this building is characterized by a large circular courtyard that, due to its construction peculiarities, has often been compared to the plan of the more imposing Forum Constantini. Despite the undisputed historical value of this particular complex, the structure’s precarious state of preservation, the absence of an accurate archaeologically-based model of its architecture, the degradation of its urban context, and arbitrary restorations hinder a clear reading of the building, whose structures and construction details are only partially published. The aim of the present study is thus to fill the lacunae in the existing studies and graphic documentation of the Durres macellum-forum, starting with a comprehensive re-examination of the bibliography and a careful analysis of its structural marble elements and the surviving masonry, supported by a new detailed model of the building’s plan and elevations. The analysis has made it possible to obtain important data not only to form a clearer picture of what must have been the architectural image of this exceptional late antique monument but also for a better understanding of the principal phases of the complex construction and of the building techniques adopted onsite by the ancient craftsmen.