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  • Via Campana
  • Pozzuoli
  •  
  • Italy
  • Campania
  • Naples
  • Pozzuoli

Credits

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Monuments

Periods

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Chronology

  • 100
  • 150 AD300 AD

Season

    • A series of imposing funerary monuments were discovered along the via Campana. They stood within five enclosures delimited by _opus reticulatum_ walls and were abandoned between the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. The space between them was divided by two side roads off the via Campana which crossed each other in the southern part of the explored necropolis. A male portrait head of Trajanic date was found within the building rubble filling mausoleum n. 10, whilst a funerary inscription dedicated to one Puteolano Demetriano, was recovered from cistern n. 114.
    • Another mausoleum was found on Via Campana, before the Montagna Spaccata road-cutting. The opus reticulatum walls preserved the plaster facing. On the lower registers of the walls, the _arcosoli_ were decorated with stucco low-relief, the scenes set amongst leafy trees and flowers on tall stems, inspired by complex funerary allegories. On the west wall Hercules is shown standing by an altar perhaps in the act of holding up the vault of heaven; on the north wall, sitting in front of a pilaster supporting a trophy vase, a hero holds an olive branch and the reins of a horse in his hands; on the east wall stands a semi-nude Apollo, with an ample cloak and identified by a lyre, at his feet a young Olympus seems to implore his pardon. Of the picture on the south wall, removed by previous excavators, only the foot of an individual remains. On the opposite wall was a well-preserved scene with a naked girl sitting on a rock. She may be identified as a Maenad or Arianna, on the basis of the bunch of grapes she holds in her right hand. Style and building technique seem to date the monument to the Augustan period. Further north, during recent excavation of a ditch, two funerary altars were recovered, both with inscriptions dedicated to one _Titus Aufidius Herma_ and to his mother _Allia Prima_, wife of _Titus Aufidius Aelianus_. They probably came from the subterranean _opus reticulatum_ structure below, next to which there was a small cemetery. Not for the first time at Pozzuoli a dog had been buried with its owner in one of the tombs. The lamp and amphora types suggested a date of around the mid 2nd century A.D. for this necropolis.

Bibliography

    • S. De Caro 2001, L’attività della Soprintendenza archeologica di Napoli e Caserta nel 2000, in Atti del XL Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia (Taranto 2000), Taranto: 865-905.
    • S. De Caro 2003, L’attività della Soprintendenza archeologica di Napoli e Caserta nel 2002, in Atti del XLII Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia (Taranto 2002), Taranto: 569-621.