In 2014, a new programme of Franco-Italian excavations began on the site of ancient Herakleia di Lucania, today Policoro. These were carried out by the Department of Archaeological Heritage at Matera (University of Basilicata), the École Pratique des Hautes Études e l’École Normale Supérieure, Paris, in collaboration with the University of Salento (Lecce) as part of a three year concession granted by MIBAC and the Archaeological Superintendency for Basilicata.

The site’s interest derives from the fact that it presents a succession of settlements, each characterised by a specific urban organisation. It is ‘an open air laboratory’ for the study of the original dynamics of the formation and transformation of the cities of Magna Graecia from the 8th – 1st centuries B.C. It is also of great importance for gaining an insight into the complex forms of cultural and political identity in the picture of changeable relationships between Greek society and indigenous communities from the geometric and Orientalizing periods until Romanisation.

Three trenches were opened. The first (A), examined the courtyard of a porticoed building in insula I of the central quarter of Collina del Castello, excavated in the past by Dinu Adamesteanu. In this sector, evidence was found for the production of small bronze coins dating to the 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. Two pits contained two types of discs (fused or cut in small bars), a coin minted from the same module, waste from smelting and numerous pieces of slag and terracotta fragments. The presence of a matt-painted ware waster attests the production of indigenous pottery at Policoro in the 7th century B.C.

Trench (B) was opened on the south side of the plateau. The end of a Hellenistic insula was identified, and on the surface there were numerous fragments of archaic pottery that differed from those belonging to an Eastern Greek figured oinochoe, from Miletus, datable to the third quarter of the 7th century B.C.

The last trench©, opened in the cella of the “archaic temple”, discovered by Adamesteanu in the valley of Varatizzo, revealed a layer of cobblestones associated with a series of pottery fragments dating to the second half of the 7th century B.C.