by Chris Fowler
Woldřich, J.N. 1886. Beiträge zur Urgeschichte Böhmens III. Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 16, 72–96.
* * *
* Received June 2009, revised December 2011
CHAPTER 41
ITALIAN ENCLOSURES
ROBIN SKEATES
INTRODUCTION
JUST over 20 years ago, I wrote an undergraduate essay on the Neolithic enclosures of Italy. It was a fundamentally typological exercise that summarized the form, date, and distribution of these structures and their associated settlements. I found it unsatisfying because I felt unable to imagine the people who had built and used the enclosures. Since then I have attempted a more anthropological approach to the interpretation of life in central Mediterranean prehistory, drawing upon current social theory, a detailed and critical reading of the ever-expanding primary literature by Italian and foreign archaeologists, and first-hand experience of sites and museums in the region. This new essay continues that process in relation to the Italian enclosures (Fig. 41.1).
FIG. 41.1. Map of key places and regions mentioned in the text.
Archaeological research on these structures has continued for about 100 years. First excavations were undertaken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, around Siracusa in south-east Sicily by Orsi and around Matera in Basilicata by archaeologists such as Patroni, Ridola, and Rellini (e.g. Orsi 1890; Patroni 1898). Aerial reconnaissance during World War II then led to Bradford’s celebrated discovery of hundreds of ditched enclosures on the Foggia Plain or ‘Tavoliere’ in northern Puglia, and to the post-war investigation of some of these on the ground by a British team (e.g. Bradford and Williams-Hunt 1946; Jones 1987). Since the mid-1960s, new discoveries and excavations of Neolithic enclosures have fairly constantly occurred throughout Italy, with highlights being Manfredini and Cassano’s work on the Tavoliere in the 1970s and 80s, Camerini and Lionetti’s work in Basilicata in the 1990s, and the recent large-area excavations of enclosures in northern Italy (e.g. Bernabò-Brea et al. 2003; Camerini and Lionetti 1995; Cassano and Manfredini 1983). New high-resolution magnetic surveys and experiments in phenomenological archaeology were also undertaken at some of the Tavoliere ditched villages (e.g. Ciminale et al. 2007; Hamilton and Whitehouse 2006). However, our knowledge of the construction, use, and transformation of these sites remains limited, particularly compared to Neolithic enclosures in central and north-west Europe. This is especially due to the generally small-scale excavation at most of them, which often focused on the relative chronologies revealed by ditch stratigraphies. Published interpretations of the Italian enclosures traditionally categorized them in terms of single functions, such as defence of villages and resources, control of domestic animals, soil containment, drainage, clay extraction, and—more recently—the visible definition and division of corporate social space and identity, and of sacred space (e.g. Barfield 2002; Morter 1990; Robb 2007; Skeates 2005).
In this chapter, my aim is to work against the grain of this tradition by emphasizing past people’s dynamic and variable design, construction, use, and transformation of the enclosures and associated environmental resources, cultural materials, and activities, over space and time, in and around key places in the landscape (cf. Skeates 2000). At the heart of my narrative is an emphasis on diversity: of the built material forms of these structures, of the affordances of their environmental and cultural contexts, of the real people who lived through the enclosures, and of the purposes they served (cf. Darvill and Thomas 2001).
THE TAVOLIERE
Circular or oval enclosure ditches, sometimes strengthened by stone walls, were characteristically constructed by Neolithic communities on and around the Tavoliere Plain in northern Puglia. Indeed, it would appear that cultural tradition determined that almost all settlements were enclosed by ditches across this extensive lowland region; an exception being the apparently unenclosed cluster of ditched compounds identified from the air at the marginal site of Masseria La Lamia at the foot of the Apennines (Jones 1987). However, variability, particularly chronological, did occur in this tradition. A core data-set is provided by some 60 ditched sites investigated through field survey, magnetic survey, and excavation, whilst hundreds more have been photographed from the air.
Right from the start of the Neolithic in the relatively open Tavoliere landscape, early farming communities using Impressed Ware dug ditches around their small villages, enclosing areas of up to 4ha. Ditches were at least 1–2m deep and between 1.6 and 3.4m wide, and usually dug into a relatively soft and easy-to-work crusta substrate (a conglomerate of sand, clay, pebbles, and calcareous concretions), which could have been used as building material. The completed ditches had vertical or slightly concave sides, and generally flat bases, and could have served a variety of inter-related purposes, including stock containment, defence of resources, and definition of corporate domestic space and identity. The earliest securely radiocarbon dated examples, assigned to the late seventh and early sixth millennia BC, are Masseria Giuffreda and Coppa Nevigata (Guilaine et al. 1981, 156; Hedges et al. 1989, 226). The sources of this cultural tradition are debatable, but at least an initial input from members of pioneer agricultural communities from across the Adriatic Sea is likely. In northern Greece, for example, a comparable tradition of settlements enclosed by ditches and walls existed throughout the Neolithic.
Ditches appear to have remained open for some time. Indeed, this was probably intended, since their inner sides were often revetted by dry-stone walling. Nevertheless, the villagers sometimes dug additional ditches, following (and occasionally intersecting) earlier ones, which sometimes resulted in multiple concentric circles of successive ditch circuits. The labour implications are considerable, both in terms of scale and organization, but we should avoid evaluating these with reference to modern economic concepts of time and energy expenditure (e.g. Brown 1991a). Community members further strengthened these boundaries by occasionally placing symbolic deposits in their bases, including human remains. For example, at Masseria Candelaro (or Valente), the relatives of a deceased adult woman dug a cavity into the inner wall of the ditch and placed her crouched body there, together with a few pottery fragments and some colourful bauxite nodules (Salvadei and Macchiarelli 1983, 253–259). A somewhat less formal burial process may have taken place in the village ditch at Ripa Tetta, according to a biographical study (Robb et al. 1991). First, the complete body of an adult man was placed face-up about 35cm above the ditch base. Then, during initial decomposition, major body parts were dispersed by scavenging carnivores. Next, the bones lay disarticulated at the bottom of the ditch and were further disturbed by flooding, fire, and animals. Finally, the remaining bones were buried by natural sediments and rocks. At other sites, the outer enclosure ditches were also gradually filled with a stratified combination of cultural remains and naturally eroded deposits.
Over a much longer time-span, a few later Neolithic communities created much larger ditched enclosures. These communities produced and identified themselves with more refined, colourful, and distinct styles of pottery, and at least some were formed by a process of settlement nucleation (Brown 1991b). Their sometimes huge enclosure ditches, up to 4m deep and 6.1m wide, delineated inhabited and more open areas of up to 28ha, and formed cumulative patterns of up to eight concentric circles. For example, four can be seen from the air at Masseria Palmori (Fig. 41.2). At Masseria Fonteviva, these multiple enclosure ditches clearly resulted from a dynamic process of growth (Trump 1987). Here, an early oval ditch was later incorporated in the eastern corner of a larger enclosure, in turn complemented by the later attachment of a third enclosure to the south-west. By the end of the Neolithic, literally hundreds of ditched villages had been constructed, reconstructed, and abandoned across the Tavoliere, extending inland from the marshy lagoons of the Adriatic coast, along the terraces of lowland watercourses, to the Apennine foothills, through long-term processes of population growth and settlement fissioning which left an indeli
ble mark on the landscape.
FIG. 41.2. Aerial photograph of Neolithic enclosure ditches at Masseria Palmori on the Tavoliere Plain, northern Puglia (supplied by Roberto Goffredo and reproduced with the kind permission of the Archive of the University of Foggia).
In those areas of the Tavoliere where sites have been most intensively mapped (e.g. Cassano and Manfredini 1983; Cassano et al. 1987; Jones 1987), enclosures clearly incorporated and transformed key places in the landscape. They enclosed the summit, scarp-edge, or foot of relatively prominent and well-drained low hills, which afforded diverse sensory connections of the wider world (Hamilton and Whitehouse 2006), and good ‘ecotonal’ access to diverse resource zones (Delano-Smith 1987, 23). Women, children, and men would have routinely brought such resources in and out of their enclosed villages, including fresh water, raw materials for a range of structures and artefacts, cereals and legumes, domestic and wild animals, edible marine and terrestrial molluscs, fish, and birds. Aerial photographs indicate the types of entrances to these enclosures, ranging from simple gaps, to in-turned funnels, to out-turned semi-circles or ‘lunettes’ (Jones 1987, 191–194). Although few of these entrances have been investigated on the ground, they clearly controlled the movement of people and resources, perhaps especially herds of sheep/goat and cattle. The ditched enclosures were, then, effective but permeable boundaries, connecting as well as contrasting the villagers’ core routines of domestic life to surrounding cultural environments and experiences, including threats and opportunities presented by members of other enclosed communities.
Inside the Tavoliere enclosures, a range of domestic structures have been excavated. Some rectangular or trapezoidal, wooden-framed, wattle-and-daub houses were identified at sites not affected by modern deep-ploughing, such as Contrada Casone, Lagnano da Piede, Masseria Monte Aquilone, and Ripa Tetta (e.g. Costantini and Tozzi 1987; De Juliis 1972; Mallory 1984–1987; Manfredini 1972). They are 4–4.5m long, and 3–4m wide. They were sometimes built on dry-stone wall foundations, with compacted earth floors, and occasional raised hearths of plaster. Other domestic features include extensive cobbled pavements used as multi-purpose work areas; rows of post holes; small channels; and various hollows, pits, and cavities—used as silos, wells, and cisterns, or for special deposits incorporating articulated and disarticulated human remains. Combinations of these structures were often enclosed by a small, continuous, and usually single, C-shaped ditch. These measure between 0.6 and 2.8m deep, 1–3.5m wide, and enclose spaces with a diameter of between 12 and 46m. On the Tavoliere, their openings are often oriented in approximately the same direction (Jones 1987), as at Masseria Centonze, where the ‘C-ditches’ are all oriented north and aligned along the long side of the oval outer enclosure (Cassano and Manfredini 1983), indicating the internal ordering of domestic space and behaviour.
The stratified fills of these smaller C-ditches suggest that their life histories matched those of the family-based households they enclosed. Initially they were dug and kept open, their inner sides sometimes revetted or built up by stone walling, presumably during the formation and occupancy of their associated households. The remains of a few deceased individuals were sometimes inhumed in small cavities carved into the sides of ditch bases, accompanied by broken pottery and a few tools, perhaps on the death of significant household members. At Masseria Fonteviva, a domed chamber cut into the lower side of a C-ditch contained the articulated bodies of two adult women, separated by a 25 cm deposit, as well as skull fragments from a child (Denston 1987). Over time, some of these inner enclosures were remodelled in successive phases, with the fill of earlier ditches sometimes revetted by a few stones when intersected by new ditches. But in due course all C-ditches were gradually filled by naturally forming deposits containing significant quantities of food remains, artefacts, and the structural remains of houses, especially following the abandonment and collapse (perhaps even intentional destruction) of domestic structures and their associated households. At relatively small early Neolithic sites, just a few C-ditches were constructed, but many more were dug at later and larger sites. For example, more than 100 are visible from the air at the mega-site of Passo di Corvo (Bradford 1950, 86), although this represents a cumulative pattern.
The histories of some of these sites continued over an even longer time-scale, following their widespread abandonment as settlements in the fifth millennium BC, possibly triggered by a desiccation of the Tavoliere, and the establishment of a new dispersed settlement pattern in northern Puglia. Indeed, some of these places, especially their part-filled ditches, retained a historic and symbolic, even monumental, significance for final Neolithic groups still based in and around the Tavoliere, who sometimes used them for primary and secondary burial. For example, at Fontanarosa Uliveto a small stone cist containing a secondary burial was constructed on top of a filled enclosure ditch, using slabs of crusta extracted from the side of the former ditch (Manfredini 1987).
SOUTHERN ITALY
Enclosures formed by ditches and/or stone walls were characteristically constructed by Neolithic communities elsewhere in southern Italy (in the generally dry regions of Sicily, Calabria, Basilicata, and southern Puglia). However, variations can also be identified here, particularly over time.
A widespread and enduring ditch-digging tradition, with close similarities to the more elaborate tradition of northern Puglia, was established particularly in southern Puglia, Basilicata, and south-east Sicily at the start of the Neolithic. Agricultural communities dug curvilinear ditches around their settlements, usually situated either on hilltops or on lower-lying river and stream terraces, cutting them into the relatively soft limestone. At least 24 such sites are known. The completed ditches generally formed single and more-or-less continuous circuits, with one or two entrances, some in the form of a ‘lunette’. At Murgia Timone, a simple 4m-wide opening was flanked by a pair of post holes, presumably supporting a wooden gate, whilst a lunette was strengthened and controlled by a walled structure (Lo Porto 1998). More unusually, Murgecchia near Matera boasts two almost concentric ditches, and at Matrensa near Siracusa the enclosure seems formed by discontinuous stretches of ditch (Ridola 1926). The ditches reached depths and widths between 1 and 4m. At least some were strengthened internally by dry-stone walls. For example, at the Stentinello site of Megara Iblea (Siracusa), a regularly laid stone wall about 1.8m wide crowned both sides of the ditch (Orsi 1921). However, at Murgia Timone near Matera, in the possibly more wooded Murge uplands in Basilicata, a wooden palisade was constructed along the inner edge of the ditch (Rellini 1929). Smaller C-shaped enclosure ditches have also been identified in and around a few settlement enclosures, as at a pair of sites near Lavello in northern Basilicata (Bianco and Cipolloni-Sampò 1987, 308; Cipolloni-Sampò 1987). Traces of other interior structures and artefacts at these settlements are similar to those on the Tavoliere. The ditches were eventually filled with this cultural material, either rapidly, as at Stentinello near Siracusa, where a lack of clear stratigraphic divisions in the ditch may indicate a single filling episode (Tinè 1961), or gradually, as at Masseria Fragennaro in the Murge, where the ditch contained five strata slowly deposited over the course of the later Neolithic (Venturo 1996).
At some sites, the outer ditches were strengthened symbolically by constructing special features and depositing material in their bases, which highlighted liminal connections and boundaries between communities of the living and the dead. For example, the east ditch at Serra d’Alto near Matera contained three crouched inhumations: one right in the bottom, and two in niches cut into the outer wall of the ditch (Rellini 1925). At Santa Barbara near Polignano a Mare (central Puglia), the ‘Manfredi hypogeum’ was dug into the inner side of a later Neolithic settlement enclosure ditch (Geniola 1987) (Fig. 41.3). It is 9m long, and has a symmetrical plan. A sloping ramp leads to two underground chambers, linked by a short central corridor. Deer skulls were arranged along the walls of the ramp and first chamber, whilst small niches and a cross-shap
ed symbol were engraved in the walls of the second chamber. A small trench with human remains was found in the back room. The hypogeum also contained a stratified deposit, with animal bones dominated by roe deer, small piles of limpets, some Spondylus shells, fragmented jars and cups in the Serra d’Alto style, and flint, obsidian, and bone tools. The main period of use of this ritual structure was the late Neolithic, radiocarbon dated here to c. 5250–4550 BC, although sherds of Diana-Bellavista pottery indicate continued use during the final Neolithic, at roughly the same time as the formation of a new settlement just outside (and therefore in relation to) the perimeter of the later Neolithic enclosure.
FIG. 41.3. The ‘Manfredi hypogeum’ dug into the side of a later Neolithic enclosure ditch at Santa Barbara near Polignano a Mare, central Puglia (after Skeates 2005, fig. 24).
Stone-walled settlement and household enclosures have also been discovered at some eight Neolithic settlements in southern Italy (none of which appear to have had ditches). Suggested analogies for these stone compounds are later Neolithic Aegean sites, such as Sesklo or Dimini in Greece (La Rosa 1987), although the nature and scale of any cultural influence remains unspecified. But the local significance of these structures, many added to natural boundaries in the landscape, and some with a clearly defensive dimension, should not be overlooked.
The best evidence comes from three relatively extensively excavated later Neolithic sites in southern Sicily and Calabria, all assigned to the fifth millennium BC late Stentinello culture. At Piano Vento in the Agrigento province, a 2.3–2.5m wide outer enclosure wall extended almost completely along the defensively exposed south and west slopes of the hilltop, over at least 400m (Castellana 1986). Three access passages were revealed along the excavated 50m section; the first comprises an access ramp of limestone blocks, 3m long and 1.6m wide, the other two comprise 1.8m-wide rock-cut hollows. Within the enclosure, circular and rectangular houses with stone foundations and wattle-and-daub superstructures were identified, associated with stone walled compounds, stone pavements, and clay-lined pits. Following the abandonment of this residential site, the enclosure was re-used to define the sacred space of a large final Neolithic cemetery. At Serra del Palco, north of Agrigento, a larger rectangular compound replaced an unenclosed settlement of oval huts (La Rosa 1987). Its walls were up to 1.5m thick. The compound measured 20m long and 12m wide, and was divided in two by an interior wall. A large house, 9.5 by 6m, was repeatedly rebuilt in the larger area, whilst the smaller area could be a storage area or stock pen. Similarly, at Capo Alfiere in Calabria, a rectangular enclosure of roughly 13 by 8m contained a wattle-and-daub house with a plastered floor, surrounded by cobble paving (Morter 1990, 1999). The compound wall was formed by multiple courses of stone with some very large boulders. It was set within a foundation trench and flanked on both sides by vertical stone slabs. Material resources were brought into, ordered, transformed, and deposited within this enclosed domestic space. They included pottery vessels, stone tools (some made of imported materials), cereals and legumes, a grape, an acorn, large and smaller domestic animals, a few wild animals, birds, fish, and molluscs. These walled communities and households were thus protected from, but also constructed out of and embedded within, their wider cultural landscapes and communication networks.