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  • Punta Calcarella-località Pignatella
  • Sorrento
  •  

    Credits

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    Monuments

    Periods

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    Chronology

    • 1 AD - 62 AD

    Season

      • In the locality of Pignatella at Punta Calcarella, a short excavation campaign was undertaken in order to uncover an architectural complex of imperial date. The complex developed on several terraces overlooking the sea. A stretch of ancient wall connected the villa to the western landing place below, the present Puolo marina. Five rooms were uncovered on the north-eastern edge of the last terrace of the villa. These were linked by a ramped corridor paved in a white mosaic with a black border. The walls were built in opus reticulatum with quoining in small blocks of grey Campanian tufa. The villa had two construction phases to which corresponded two overlying levels, created by raising the floor level by at least 50 cm. The first was datable to the Julio-Claudian period due to the presence, below an _opus sectile_ floor, of a white mosaic associated with the first _opus reticulatum_ walls. Rooms no. 1, 3 and 4, destined for use as living and reception rooms, were decorated, as part of the second restructuring, by splendid floors of polychrome marble, of which only small patches were preserved. These were all associated with a marble dado, attested by the housings on the walls and by rare fragments of marble slab still in situ. Rooms no. 2, 5 and 6 which functioned as corridor and passageway, were paved with white mosaic bordered with a single or double black band. These floors were in phase with the _opus sectile_ floors described above. As regards the _sectilia_ found, the closest parallels from Pompeii and Herculaneum date to a period post 62 A.D. The Flavian attribution of the _sectilia_ was also confirmed by several fragments of painted wall plaster, found in a layer of collapse, depicting stylised vegetal motifs characteristic of the IV Pompeian style.

    Bibliography

      • M.L. Nava, 2006, L’attività archeologica a Napoli e Caserta nel 2005, in Atti del XLV Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia (Taranto 2005), Taranto: 583-661.