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Excavation

  • Muro Leccese, proprietà Giuseppe Natali
  • Sitrie
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    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 excavated an area of privately owned agricultural terrain, situated on the northern edge of the modern town of Muro Leccese overlying the central part of the Messapian settlement. Two trenches were opened in sectors where geo-magnetic surveys undertaken by IBAM-CNR of Lecce had shown the existence of anomalies.

      The first trench (7.50 × 4 m) (fig. 1), situated alongside the eastern perimeter wall of the property, revealed a road on a north-south alignment, its surface made up of a beaten very compact crushed tufa mixed with small and middle sized stones. Only 2.30 m of the road’s original width was exposed. In fact, the presence and position of cart tracks confirmed its continuation beyond the property’s limit. The road was flanked on the west side by a sidewalk, 3.70 m wide, in compact crushed tufa sloping towards the road. A channel 0.80-0.90 m wide, of which only the floor of compact crushed tufa was preserved, ran between the road and sidewalk, collecting rainwater from both.

      In the west area of the trench, part of two large rooms aligned along the sidewalk and their perimeter wall of stone blocks were exposed. The bedrock was reached in both rooms and below parts of the sidewalk, at a depth of about 1 m from ground level. Given the absence of materials pre-dating the 4th century B.C. and later than the first decades of the following century, all of the identified structures (road, channel, sidewalk) seem to belong to the same construction phase as the settlement’s curtain wall dating to the end of the 4th century B.C.

      The second trench, (5 × 3 m), situated 10 m west of the first, revealed a more chronologically articulated sequence. In the eastern part, in direct contact with the bedrock, there was a layer of red earth, datable to the Iron Age by the presence of numerous fragments of matt painted ware and a few fragments of Corinthian _kotylai. A patch of floor made up of compact gravel was present in the upper part of the layer. Directly overlying this was a Messapian occupation layer (4th century B.C.) to which belonged a wall of stone blocks, on a different alignment from the structures in trench 1, and a thick floor made up of beaten crushed tufa mixed with clay, perhaps part of a large open area.

      Cavities of different type and size relating to a phase of agricultural use were found in both trenches.

    • Liliana Giardino - Università del Salento 

    Director

    Team

    • Francesco Meo - Università del Salento
    • Teresa Oda Calvaruso
    • Catia Bianco

    Research Body

    • Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia

    Funding Body

    • Università del Salento

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