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Excavation

  • Poggio Colla
  • Vicchio di Mugello
  •  
  • Italy
  • Tuscany
  • Florence
  • Vicchio

Tools

Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • Work concentrated on the Podere Funghi in a field north-east of Poggio Colla and on the slope to the north-west below the acropolis.

    The first trenches in the Podere Funghi brought to light small vases and bowls made in well refined yellow clay. The presence of several wasters suggests that the deposit may have been the dump from a nearby pottery workshop. Subsequent excavations revealed a structure datable to the 3rd century B.C., with a rectangular main room with a circular hearth towards the southern side around which cooking vessels were found. The exact dimensions of this room are still to be determined as the north wall has not survived. However, the fact that it was certainly larger than the preserved dimensions is attested by a drainage channel, at least 3 m long, north of the present edge of the room. The area to the west may have been a portico. Towards the east, traces of an earlier construction suggest the presence of another room or portico, where the remains of at least 4 pottery kilns were found (one of which below the foundations of the building’s south wall), used to produce the vessels found in the deposit. The archeo-magnetic dating of the kilns confirmed the 4th or 3rd century B.C. date. The Podere Funghi began to be used for pottery production, perhaps due to its proximity to water and the clay source. Later, a large structure with well-built foundations took the place of the production area and was subsequently destroyed at the same time as the acropolis.

    The acropolis on Poggio Colla was a fortified rectangle on a north-south alignment with several monumental phases. The walls were partially excavated in the early 90’s. Traces of these structures had already been found by Nicosia, including blocks with mouldings, probably part of a podium. Later finds of other bases relating to a temple, whose foundations were surrounded by carbonised black earth rich in late Orientalising-early archaic bucchero, dates the site’s first phase to the second half of the 7th century B.C. The bucchero finds, with unusual vessel types, attests that the site was flourishing in the 7th century B.C. As the temple dates to around 500 B.C. and the earliest pottery dates to at least a century earlier, it is not possible place the two contexts in relation to each other.

    The acropolis underwent a radical transformation in phase two. The orientation changed and followed the natural sides of the plateau. The religious nature of the original complex continued in the successive phases, as attested by votive contexts found between an altar, situated on the long axis of the courtyard, and the latter’s western part. The first of these contexts was a hoard of over 300 bronzes, pottery fragments, aes rude weights, finished artefacts and coins. The votive nature of the area west of the altar was confirmed by the discovery of a large natural cleft, which following the destruction of the phase one structures, was partly closed by a large sandstone block with moulding from the temple. A gold ring and long gold threads were also placed in the cleft. This was a ritual deposit that should be placed in relation to the sacred nature, perhaps chthonic, of the natural cut.

    The phase three building was the largest and incorporated the phase two structures. The courtyard had rooms on at least three sides, where cereals were stored and textiles and pottery produced; those to the west housed large pithoi. This suggests that the sanctuary had its own fluorit from the 7th-5th century B.C., and that in a subsequent period (5th-4th century) the temple was destroyed and incorporated into the succeeding structures. New evidence of this ritual destruction emerged in 2006 with the discovery of a deposit containing an element of a sandstone altar, two sandstone statue bases and bronze and gold ex-voto.

  • MiBAC 

Director

  • Gregory Warden - Southern Methodist University – Division of Art History

Team

  • Luca Fedeli - Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana

Research Body

  • Southern Methodist University – Division of Art History

Funding Body

Images

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