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CAPO ALFIERE, A NEOLITHIC SITE IN ITALY
Capo Alfiere
Jon Morter of the University of Texas wrote: “Capo Alfiere is the name of a Neolithic site located on a small headland on the eastern coast of Calabria. Archaeological excavations at the site were conducted by a team from the University of Texas in the summers of 1987 and 1990. The digging was directed by Jon Morter. The work is part of a broad study of the landscape of the territory of the Classical Greek colonial city of Kroton (modern Crotone) under the supervision of Prof. Joe Carter. [Source: Jon Morter, Institute of Classical Archaeology, University of Texas at Austin ]
“The excavations have revealed the surviving portions of a stratified deposit dating to the Middle Neolithic period. Two main strata have been defined to date, each with sub-phases. The majority of the pottery appears to be of the Stentinello tradition, a type first defined in eastern Sicily by Paolo Orsi at the end of the last century. Other finds include both ground and chipped stone objects. A large floral and faunal assemblage is currently under analysis at the Laboratorio per Bioarcheologia in Rome under the supervision of Dott. Lorenzo Costantini.
“We were fortunate in obtaining a series of radiocarbon dates from the site which give a general and broadly consistent picture of its overall date. Three dates from the upper stratum (5650+/-70 bp, 5450+/-60 bp, 5410+/-80 bp) date the hearth and the surface sealing it to the second half of the 5th millennium B.C., after calibration. There was no suitable carbon from stratum I so resort had to be made to dating with animal bone. This gave a date of 5950+/-100 bp, indicating a calibrated range towards the beginning of the 5th millennium B.C.
“These dates are interesting as they put the upper stratum rather late in the accepted range for Stentinello sites. The lack of ceramics attributable to the supposedly successive Serra d'Alto phase, and discovery of some closer to the purportedly Late Neolithic, Diana types, has led us to question the general applicability of the accepted southern Italian ceramic sequence hereabouts.”
See Separate Article: LATE STONE AGE AND BRONZE AGE ITALY europe.factsanddetails.com
Websites on Ancient Rome: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com
Capo Alfiere Architecture and Artifacts
Capo Alfieri remains
Jon Morter of the University of Texas wrote: “ The site's architectural remains are particularly interesting. These are best preserved in the upper stratum (II). Two stretches of an extremely large stone wall were discovered. These form an angle and appear to enclose the cobble floor of a house. We estimate that about 50% of the latter has survived. A reflooring of this structure had sealed a large quern and the stone-lined hearth of the hut, both features being built into the original cobble floor. The floor appears to have been about 4.8m on its surviving complete side and probably at least that long in the incomplete dimension. The corners of the paving are curved. The hearth was probably originally central to the structure and the large emplaced quern was beside it. A small portion of a similar pavement (from a structure now largely destroyed by recent agriculture) was found in the earlier stratum. [Source: Jon Morter, Institute of Classical Archaeology, University of Texas at Austin ]
“The massive walls are of a peculiar construction. A central core of large blocks was faced on one or both sides by large slabs set vertically. Unfortunately, due to plough damage, the large walls had not survived above the first course or two. Thus it is impossible to say with certainty how high they originally stood. As they are a metre or more thick, it seems logical that they originally stood quite high. There was considerable rock and daub tumble above the hut paving in the area delimited by the walls.
“Studies of the ceramics, lithics, floral and faunal collections from the site are still in progress, but some preliminary observations can be made. Stentinello ceramics are distinguished by their use of elaborate impressed and incised decorative design work. This seems to represent a divergence from the painted finewares produced elsewhere in the lower Italian peninsula at this time. At Capo Alfiere, there are definite differences between the Stentinello style ceramics from the upper and lower strata. The earlier material is more consistently black in colour and the finer decoration makes use of coloured pastes (ochres and calcium carbonate) in a variety of colours (yellow through red and also white) to enhance the decoration. The use of ochres seems to have fallen out of favour by the period of the upper stratum but the actual impressed designs are, if anything, more elaborate. The site has produced very little painted pottery; what there is seems to be on a distinct and possibly imported, fabric (Morter and Iceland 1995).
“Although the chipped stone artifacts from this site are not in of themselves particularly exciting technologically, being a fairly straightforward microblade industry, an examination of the raw materials used is very interesting. There appears to have been a shift in raw material usage or availability over time. The lithics from the lower stratum (I) contained 28% obsidian (by count), while the upper stratum had almost 67% obsidian. The balance of the lithic material was cherts and quartzites available fairly locally.
“This apparent increase in obsidian availability, only obtainable from Lipari by long distance exchange, may be signaling an increase in material traffic by the upper level. This may also be reflected in the discovery of a cache of large ground stone axes in that level — also probably derived from some distance from the site.
“Analysis of the floral and faunal remains from the 1990 excavations and hence the lower stratum is not quite complete. The recovery of floral remains from the upper stratum (II) has been good with a variety of wheats and barley represented plus a good selection of legumes and weeds (information provided by Dott. L. Costantini listed in Morter 1990). Although the proportion of identifiable animal bones is small, the collection has demonstrated a good selection of domesticate and some vermin (Scali 1990). Domesticated animals predominate over game as is typical for this period.”
Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps
According to UNESCO: “This serial property of 111 small individual sites encompasses the remains of prehistoric pile-dwelling (or stilt house) settlements in and around the Alps built from around 5000 to 500 B.C. on the edges of lakes, rivers or wetlands. Excavations, only conducted in some of the sites, have yielded evidence that provides insight into life in prehistoric times during the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Alpine Europe and the way communities interacted with their environment. Fifty-six of the sites are located in Switzerland. The settlements are a unique group of exceptionally well-preserved and culturally rich archaeological sites, which constitute one of the most important sources for the study of early agrarian societies in the region. [Source: UNESCO World Heritage Site website =]
Reconstruction of the Neolithic village of Travo
“The series of 111 out of the 937 known archaeological pile-dwelling sites in six countries around the Alpine and sub-alpine regions of Europe is composed of the remains of prehistoric settlements situated under water, on lake shores, along rivers or in wetlands. The exceptional conservation conditions for organic materials provided by the waterlogged sites, combined with extensive under-water archaeological investigations and research in many fields of natural science, such as archaeobotany and archaeozoology, over the past decades, has combined to present an outstanding detailed perception of the world of early agrarian societies in Europe. The precise information on their agriculture, animal husbandry, development of metallurgy, over a period of more than four millennia, coincides with one of the most important phases of recent human history: the dawn of modern societies. =
“In view of the possibilities for the exact dating of wooden architectural elements by dendrochronology, the sites have provided exceptional archaeological sources that allow an understanding of entire prehistoric villages and their detailed construction techniques and spatial development over very long time periods. They also reveal details of trade routes for flint, shells, gold, amber, and pottery across the Alps and within the plains, transport evidence from dugout canoes and wooden wheels, some complete with axles for two wheeled carts dating from around 3,400BC, some of the earliest preserved in the world, and the oldest textiles in Europe dating to 3,000 B.C. This cumulative evidence has provided a unique insight into the domestic lives and settlements of some thirty different cultural groups in the Alpine lacustrine landscape that allowed the pile dwellings to flourish. =
Why the site is important: 1) The series of pile dwelling sites are one of the most important archaeological sources for the study of early agrarian societies in Europe between 5,000 and 500 B.C. The waterlogged conditions have preserved organic matter that contributes in an outstanding way to our understanding of significant changes in the Neolithic and Bronze Age history of Europe in general, and of the interactions between the regions around the Alps in particular. 2) The series of pile dwelling sites has provided an extraordinary and detailed insight into the settlement and domestic arrangements of pre-historic, early agrarian lake shore communities in the Alpine and sub-Alpine regions of Europe over almost 5,000 years. The revealed archaeological evidence allows an unique understanding of the way these societies interacted with their environment, in response to new technologies, and also to the impact of climate change. =
See Separate Article: LATE STONE AGE AND BRONZE AGE ITALY europe.factsanddetails.com
Terramare and Appennine People
During the Middle Bronze Age, farmers belonging to a culture known as the Terramare settled the Po Plain, which is bordered by the Alps to the north and west, the Apennine Mountains to the south, and the Adriatic Sea to the east.
David Silverman of Reed College wrote: “The Middle Bronze Age is characterized by the flourishing of two distinct groups, the Terramare people or Terramaricoli (dwellers on land and sea) in the Po valley, and the Appenine people on either side of the ridge of the Appenine mountains in central and southern Italy. The break with the Early Bronze rests upon new pottery types, new kinds of settlements, increased skill in metalworking, and a shift towards settled agriculture from semi-nomadic pastoralism. [Source: David Silverman, Reed College, Classics 373 ~ History 393 Class ^*^]
“Because the Terramare people seemed to lay their villages out in grid systems, and favored the digging of deep ditches around their settlements, some romance minded early Italian archaeologists thought of them as Proto-Romans (because Roman colonies and military camps were laid out on a grid and surrounded by a ditch and a palisade). The outstanding characteristic of their towns, from which their name derives, is that they built their huts upon piles or terraces on the banks of rivers. But the fact is, of course, that the later pattern of Roman towns and camps had nothing to do with how these prehistoric people lived. It is with these people, though. that the debate between the proponents of the invasion or immigration pattern and those who favor the local development model heats up. The standard line holds that the Terramare people are immigrants from the Danube River valley area, and that they are speakers of a dialect of Indo-European.
“More widespread than the Terramaricoli, the Apennine people are usually depicted as being just a few steps behind them, although ahead of many of their countrymen, who continued to live as Neolithic people in blissful ignorance of the progress being made elsewhere on their peninsula. Essentially pastoralists, they would graze their animals in the hills during the warm season and move down to the plains in the winter. They had extensive contacts with the Mycenaean traders during the years that those traders were active on the mainland (c. 1350-1150), especially through their settlement near the Mycenaean trading post at Scoglio del Tonno (Tarentum).
“Up until around 1400 BC, or the start of Middle Bronze Age II, both types of Bronze Age Italians had practiced inhumation, the burial of dead bodies in caves or in the ground, exclusively. Suddenly (in archaeological terms, i.e. over a transitional period of perhaps 50 years) they begin cremating the dead and interring their ashes in special containers, earthenware burial urns. Basic anthropology teaches us that disposal of the dead tends to be a deeply rooted custom, of long standing and significance, because many peoples of the world have believed that how the dead are buried will affect their experience in the afterlife and/or the relations between themselves and the ghosts of their ancestors. In other words, people do not just change their custom in the disposal of the dead for no reason.
Teramare sites in the central Po Plain
Terramare Farming
Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: The Terramare completely cleared the area’s forests and intensively cultivated the land. The landscape proved bountiful, producing bumper crops of wheat, barley, and other cereals, and supporting plentiful herds of livestock including sheep, goats, and pigs. To further their agricultural endeavors, the Terramare embarked on extensive irrigation projects. They located their settlements along the Po River and its tributaries, and dug a large number of wells. These settlements were surrounded by moats, which were at once defensive features and additional sources of water. The Terramare built their houses on wood piles, using timber harvested from the rapidly depleting forests. A fragmentary wooden plow and wooden implement, which was used to poke holes in soil before planting seeds, are among the hundreds of farming tools unearthed in the Noceto pool described below. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, November/December 2021]
Over time, the remains of Terramare villages grew into mounds that became stores of rich organic material. This phenomenon is the source of the culture’s name — from terra marna, which means “rich land” in the local Emilian dialect. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the decayed contents of many of these mounds were used to fertilize the fields of the Po Plain, which continues to be one of the most agriculturally productive regions in Europe. Such was the fate of the mound containing the remains of the Terramare village closest to the Noceto pool, which lay just a few hundred yards away.
Around 1150 B.C., the Terramare culture collapsed, and all their settlements on the Po Plain were abandoned. This was most likely a result of a strain on resources due to increasing population, exacerbated by declining rainfall. According to Andrea Zerboni, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Milan, the Terramare likely moved to the Apennines or the southern edge of the Alps. The plain was resettled around 200 years later, and, when people returned, they once again cultivated the region, employing Terramare tools and techniques, which continued to be used until quite recently. Among the tools excavated in the Noceto pool, Zerboni, who himself grew up on the Po Plain, recognized a small piece of bent wood used to poke holes in the soil in which farmers would then plant seeds. “I remember my grandfather used the same tool to cultivate his garden,” he says. “In the Noceto pool, we have the roots of the traditional culture of the Po Plain, which probably dates back almost 3,500 years.”
Terramare Artificial Pool
Around 3,500 years ago, members of the Terramare culture built a large artificial pool on a hilltop near Nocento, a northern Italian town on northern Italy’s Po Plain. The Terramare were extremely successful farmers, and archaeologists believe the pool, which was filled with a wide range of artifacts, was a ritual site intended to celebrate the culture’s agricultural successes. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, November/December 2021]
Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: On a hilltop at the edge of the town of Noceto on northern Italy’s Po Plain, a 2004 construction project had gotten just a few feet into the ground when a wooden structure began to emerge. A team of archaeologists led by Mauro Cremaschi and Maria Bernabò Brea was called in to investigate. Rather than material such as ash and charcoal, typically found where people lived or worked, the structure was filled with natural sediments of the sort that would be found in a lake. The structure they were excavating was not a building at all, the researchers realized — it was an artificial pool used during the second millennium B.C. “The Noceto pool is unique in Italy — it’s unique in the world,” says Zerboni. “Building such a structure implies very careful planning, coordinating the work of many people, and a very clear architectural plan. We don’t expect to find such majestic structures from prehistory.”
Reconstruction of a Terramare settlement
When they reached the bottom of the pool after several years of careful work, the archaeologists marveled at the feat of ancient engineering before them. Twenty-six wooden poles were arranged vertically to form a tank measuring roughly 40 feet long, 23 feet wide, and at least 16 feet deep. More than 240 interlocking boards lined the pool’s earthen walls and were held in place by the poles. The poles, in turn, were pressed against the walls by two networks of horizontal beams that crossed the pool perpendicular to each other. And, for good measure, a pair of long beams were arranged diagonally to buttress the four corner poles. As the researchers would learn, the pool’s builders had good reason to take extra care to ensure the soundness of their design. “When we arrived at the bottom, we said, ‘OK, our job is done, we have finished the excavation,’” says Zerboni. “But we dug a few more trenches just to check what was below the tank, and we found evidence of another wood structure.” This turned out to be an earlier attempt at building a somewhat larger tank, which had collapsed before it was completed. It’s unclear whether the earlier design simply couldn’t withstand the pressure of the earthen walls or whether one of the area’s frequent earthquakes contributed to its demise. In any case, the upper tank, whose design included additional supports, held strong for millennia.
To determine when exactly the tanks were built, the University of Milan team collaborated with Sturt Manning, an archaeologist and dendrochronology expert at Cornell University. The tanks were built primarily from oak, which meant that conventional dendrochronology was not an option — there is not a continuous securely dated sequence of oak tree-ring records that goes back as far as the Middle Bronze Age in northern Italy. Instead, Manning used a technique called tree-ring radiocarbon wiggle matching. This involved measuring the amount of radioactive carbon in samples drawn from a number of rings in wood from the tanks. According to the results, the lower tank was built around 1444 B.C. and the upper tank was built about 12 years later, around 1432 B.C. There is some uncertainty in the measurement of radiocarbon levels, but both estimates are thought to be accurate to within around four years.
Artifacts From in Terramare Pool Indicate It Was Used for Ritual Purposes
Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: A number of clay votive figurines were found in the pool, includinga cow, an anthropomorphic figure, and a pig.The team found no indication that the pool had served any practical purpose. There was no sign of a mechanism for channeling water in or out, and the fine-grained sediments had accumulated slowly at the pool’s bottom without the sort of regular disturbance that would have occurred if it had served as a reservoir. Their excavations did, however, uncover an extensive array of material in the pool. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, November/December 2021]
Reconstructed Terramare houses
The finds include around 150 complete vases and 25 miniature vessels, which pottery experts dated to this region’s Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1600 — 1300 B.C.). Zerboni notes that the pottery found in the pool is of a type that would have been highly valued and used only for special occasions. The excavators also uncovered seven small clay votive figurines depicting horses, pigs, cows, and, in one instance, an anthropomorphic figure. Similar examples from the period in Europe are known, but are quite rare, says Zerboni. A well-preserved millennia-old woven basket was also discovered in the pool.
A large number of animal remains were unearthed as well, primarily deer antlers, but also a complete skeleton of a baby pig. There were spindles, numerous baskets, and several large blocks of wood, as well as hundreds of wooden farming tools, including four whole and fragmentary plows. These items had all been carefully deposited in the pool in distinct layers, as if during multiple events. “From this evidence, and from the greatness of the structure, we started thinking it was related to some sort of ritual,” says Zerboni. “The Noceto pool was probably built to celebrate something.”
What the Artificial Pool Says About the Terramare
Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: Around 1450 B.C., the number of Terramare settlements increased and some grew much larger. The overall population also increased and people exploited the land more aggressively. There are indications that what had been a relatively egalitarian society grew more hierarchical at this point. To Zerboni, the pool and the items deposited in it were likely intended to represent many of the elements contributing to the culture’s success. These included wood, which they used to build their villages; farming tools, which they used to work the land; and water, which they used to nourish crops. “These were probably offerings to a divinity or to nature to show how grateful they were,” Zerboni says. “The pool was a sort of monument intended to celebrate the agriculture and the natural resources that supported their community.”[Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, November/December 2021]
Manning believes that the process of building the pool may have helped fortify the hierarchy that appears to have developed as the Terramare population exploded. “You might speculate that this is the sort of group building and regional collective activity that an ambitious ruler or priest might engage in to link together a community or even a couple of communities,” he says. “Creating the thing means people have to gather together, work together, create a common purpose, and then it becomes a sort of venue to come and visit afterwards.” Those members of the community who climbed the hill to gaze into the pool’s waters might have been rewarded with a transcendent experience. “You could almost see this as a mirror in which you would have been both looking at the reflection of the world around you, but also looking through it to see some form of netherworld or underworld,” Manning says. “I wonder if this wasn’t symbolic of connections between the divine and the earthly for these people.”
Etruscan Areas in Italy
Powerful Etruscan cities included Tarquinia, Vulci, Cerveteri, Vertolunia and Veii. Tarquinia was an important Etruscan city that flourished between 600 and 400 B.C. Located about 80 kilometers northwest of Rome, it is the home of a five-kilometer-long necropolis filled with more than 6,000 tombs cut into tufa hills between the 7th and 2nd centuries B.C. The tombs have have yielded much of what we know about the Etruscans.
The archeologist Alessando Mandolesi of the University of Turin told Archaeology magazine: Tarquinia “was one of the most powerful cities of the Etruscan league and a wealthy center of trade and commerce. You have to imagine people arriving from the port and seeing the two imposing mounds ...of the Tarquinian rulers." According to Roman tradition Etruscan reached its height when one of its king married a Tarquinian noblewoman and brought a team of painters and artists from Tarquinia to Rome.
Fiesole, Chiusi, Volterra and Populonia were important Etruscan settlements in Tuscany. Fiesole (near Florence) is beautifully situated on a hill overlook the Arno. Here you can find a ruined Etruscan temple, a Roman amphitheater and bath and archeological museum with Roman and Etruscan treasures. Volterra (61 kilometers from Pisa) is situated among hills and crags and boasts an old Etruscan wall and museum.
Umbria also has a number of important Etruscan sites. Underneath Rocca Paolina fortress in Perguria is an underground city and near villa dela Prome is the largest Etruscan arch in Italy. The archeological museum in Tarquina has a fine Etruscan exhibit, including a beautiful pair of winged horses. There are also some excellent tomb painting in the Tarquina area but visitors generally aren't allowed in the tombs. A few miles away is Ipogeo di Volumni there is an interesting Etruscan tomb. There are also Etruscan sights in Todi, Bettona and Orvieto.
Origin of the Etruscans
The long-running controversy about the origins of the Etruscan people appears to be very close to being settled once and for all. Professor Alberto Piazza, from the University of Turin, Italy , a geneticist, told a conference of the European Society of Human Genetics that there is overwhelming evidence that the Etruscans were settlers from old Anatolia (now in southern Turkey). [Source: meta-religion.com, June 18, 2007]
The origins of the Etruscans have long been debated by archaeologists, historians and linguists. Three main theories have emerged: that the Etruscans came from Anatolia, Southern Turkey, as propounded by the Greek historian Herotodus; that they were indigenous to the region and developed from the Iron Age Villanovan society, as suggested by another Greek historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus; or that they originated from Northern Europe.
Piazza and his colleagues study genetic samples from three present-day Italian populations living in Murlo, Volterra, and Casentino in Tuscany, central Italy. "We already knew that people living in this area were genetically different from those in the surrounding regions", he says. "Murlo and Volterra are among the most archaeologically important Etruscan sites in a region of Tuscany also known for having Etruscan-derived place names and local dialects. The Casentino valley sample was taken from an area bordering the area where Etruscan influence has been preserved."
The scientists compared DNA samples taken from healthy males living in Tuscany, Northern Italy, the Southern Balkans, the island of Lemnos in Greece, and the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia. The Tuscan samples were taken from individuals who had lived in the area for at least three generations. The samples were compared with data from modern Turkish, South Italian, European and Middle-Eastern populations. "We found that the DNA samples from individuals from Murlo and Volterra were more closely related those from near Eastern people than those of the other Italian samples", says Professor Piazza. "In Murlo particularly, one genetic variant is shared only by people from Turkey, and, of the samples we obtained, the Tuscan ones also show the closest affinity with those from Lemnos."
Scientists had previously shown this same relationship for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in order to analyse female lineages. And in a further study, analysis of mtDNA of ancient breeds of cattle still living in the former Etruria found that they too were related to breeds currently living in the near East.
Herodotus' theory, much criticised by subsequent historians, states that the Etruscans emigrated from the ancient region of Lydia, on what is now the southern coast of Turkey, because of a long-running famine. Half the population was sent by the king to look for a better life elsewhere, says his account, and sailed from Smyrna (now Izmir) until they reached Umbria in Italy. "We think that our research provides convincing proof that Herodotus was right", says Professor Piazza, "and that the Etruscans did indeed arrive from ancient Lydia.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.
Last updated October 2024