This research aimed at investigating the middle and late Bronze Age settlement and the Ligurian settlement on the terracing which was occupied between the 6th and 2nd centuries B.C. and then occupied sporadically until the early Imperial period.
In the area of trench 1 evidence emerged for occupation on the upper plain of Monte Vallassa beginning in the early middle Neolithic period followed by sporadic but characteristic evidence from the Neolithic. More substantial evidence begins in the middle Bronze Age, the period to which the permanent village dates, characterized by defensive and sustaining walls for the land chosen for the siting of dwellings.
Trench 5 indicated that the organization of the area datable to the 5th century B.C. was preceded by an earlier occupation phase in the 6th century B.C. The discovery of various types of structure still in situ such as fragments of wall, post holes, areas of beaten floors and hearths, as well as evidence of repeated leveling carried out by cutting into natural and the bedrock, demonstrate the substantial nature of settlement here during the 6th century B.C.
As well as the numerous fragments of more or less coarse impasto pottery (ovoid jars, carenated bowls, smooth truncated-cone shaped bowls), fine ware pottery was also found (bucchero, burnished wares).
The careful investigation of the site, as well as revealing rich and detailed evidence about the ancient Ligurian people, is now beginning to bring to light evidence regarding the reoccupation of the Apennine highlands during the 6th century B.C. and of the related phenomenon which seems in some ways to repeat what happened in the late middle and late Bronze Age. This occupation and exploitation of the upland plain re-establishes an economic system which, initially, interested the foothills and later the higher areas, involved in an exchange network with the plains which could not be omitted from the resource supply chain. In this sense one of the factors which must have influenced the choice of a site on Monte Valassa, which has to be seen as part of an overall settlement strategy, must be sought in the mount’s strategic position, an aspect which also appears characteristic of the earlier occupation phases on the site. (Cristina Chiaramonte Treré)