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Excavation

  • Cittadella Nicolaiana – edificio conventuale di Largo Abate Elia (III Cortile)
  • Bari
  • Palazzo del Priore

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    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)

    • Between December 2006 and March 2007 excavations took place inside a part the interior of the monastery building attached to the prioral palace of the Basilica of San Nicola (Nicolaian citadel), in the historic centre of Bari. Below the floor’s loose foundation and earth layers, badly disturbed by building activities in the mid 20th century (Stagione dei Grandi Restauri), the excavation uncovered a nucleus of ten tombs belonging to an urban cemetery, probably more extensive, with a double layer of depositions.

      The earth graves lined with stone blocks were arranged on an east-west alignment in parallel rows, with the exception of tombs 8 and 9 which were partially destroyed by the building work. The latest tombs belonged to a series of infant burials (Ts. 2, 3, 6, 10) in a poor state of preservation laying immediately above the tombs with adult individuals. In some cases (Ts. 5 and 7) the latter contained articulated skeletons the taphanomic study of which produced important data relating to the adoption, in this cemetery, of particular burial practices. These practices involved the lower and upper limbs and the cranium and were probably symbolic. To date there are no precedents for this type of ritual in post-antique Bari. Furthermore, two of the tombs (Ts. 1 and 7) contained pottery artefacts (small ritual cooking pots in plain buff ware). This pottery orients the dating of the cemetery towards the centuries of the Byzantine re-conquest of the Apulian capital, site of the Court of the Catapan from the 9th-11th century, and placed by the sources and most scholars right in the area on which the Basilica and connected structures stands.

      Continuation of the excavation below the Byzantine cemetery revealed an interesting stratigraphic sequence with occupation levels dating to the site’s pre-Byzantine phase, obliterating habitations and layers of destruction/abandonment preliminarily dateable to between the 5th/6th-8th century, that is the earliest settlement phase on the site. A preliminary look at the substantial quantity of pottery and amphorae attests the progressive occupation in the late antique period of the central-eastern part of the low coastal promontory, site of the earliest settlement of Bari, which in the prehistoric and Classical periods was mainly concentrated on its extreme northern tip.

      Close to the southern edge of the Byzantine urban cemetery the massive stratigraphic deposit was deeply cut by the foundation trench of a substantial wall on an east-west alignment built in the Angevin period. The wall was uncovered for a length of circa 30 m and was seen to have been reused as the foundation for the monastery building attached to the prioral palace of the Nicolaian citadel. Excavation of the layers of fill from the foundation trench of the Angevin wall produced a large quantity of coarse pottery and tableware which the attested classes date to between the end of the 13th and the 14th century. A lead pilgrim badge was also recovered. This showed a half-length figure of San Nicola with the initials S(anctus) N(icolaus) on either side, the saint is shown wearing an omophorion, typical liturgical parament according to Byzantine iconography. The quadrangular shaped placquette has an arched end and two eyelets on the upper for attaching it to clothing. Given the particular find context it certainly attests the arrival of the first pilgrims who visited the Basilica of Bari, one of the most important sanctuaries of medieval Christian Europe.

    • Maria Cioce - Centro Operativo per l’Archeologia di Bari 

    Director

    • Giuseppe Andreassi - Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia

    Team

    • Patrizia Emanuel
    • Maria Rosaria Depalo - Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia
    • Daniela Catalano

    Research Body

    • Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia

    Funding Body

    • Basilica Pontificia di S.Nicola di Bari

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