Fasti Online Home | Switch To Fasti Archaeological Conservation | Survey
logo

Excavation

  • La Molinara
  • Barricelle
  •  
  • Italy
  • Basilicate
  • Province of Potenza
  • Marsicovetere

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)

  • This campaign mainly concentrated on the western sector of the complex where the late antique levels of the pars rustica and fructuaria were uncovered. This was entered via a corridor lined by a series of symmetrical rooms, arranged around the large peristyle. This was probably the residence of the vilicus.

    The quadrangular peristyle (13.10 × 10.30 m) was built of imposing pillars, six on each of the long sides and five on the short sides. The rectangular, plastered bases were perfectly preserved. The pillars were abutted by semi-columns.

    The peristyle was the fulcrum of the complex during the monumentalising phase dating to the Antonine period. It was reoccupied in the late antique period, when it was radically restructured: new walls reduced its size and several thresholds were reused as the bases for the new portico.

    Between the 6th-7th century A.D., the peristyle lost its residential function and was transformed into an area used for the butchering and cooking of meat and the production of lime from the stone building materials. The thresholds were again reused, this time as work surfaces connected with the use of nine hearths found within this space. The hearths were constituted by cooking surfaces made of tile or baked clay. Two contained soap stone vessels, and the remains of a large quantity of bovine and horse bones were found close to a third hearth. A tank built of mortar, used for slaking lime, was built in the centre of the peristyle and was linked, to the north, to a service room, storeroom and a circular limekiln (diameter 1.20 m).

    Evidence of the later occupation of the complex was also found in the rooms situated around the peristyle. These were clearly used for craft-working activities as attested by cooking surfaces, the limekiln and a stone bench used for butchering meat. Rooms 16 and 9 were respectively, a dump (which produced large amounts of pottery, above all plain and painted coarse wares and cooking wares), and a deposit for stone which was to be thrown into the limekiln.

    Among the most interesting finds for this phase were a series of fibulae in the form of horses and peacocks, a bronze buckle and hook, an anulus signatorius with a monogramme (probably that of the property owner), a bronze ring with a snake engraved on the bezel (probably to be associated with a mystery cult), bone combs with incised decoration, a bead made of amber and glass paste and a glass appliqué of a theatrical mask.

    The later occupation layers in rooms 11, 16, 17 and 18 produced seven stamped tile fragments, adding to the two already found, bearing the formula C. Brutti Praesentis members of the family of Bruttia Crispina, who married the emperor Commodus in 178 A.D. Lastly, two late burials came to light in room 9, which was used for storage in a late period. These were a mother in an “a cappuccina” tomb, wearing a bronze bracelet on her wrist, and her baby which died immediately after birth and was buried beside her in an earth grave covered by tiles. A Latin cross was impressed on one of the tiles and a small jug, used for the Christian ritual of the refrigerium, was stuck in the ground next to the grave.

Director

  • Alfonsina Russo - Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Basilicata

Team

  • Maria Pina Gargano
  • Helga Di Giuseppe - Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica

Research Body

  • Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Basilicata

Funding Body

  • ENI

Images

  • No files have been added yet