by Chris Fowler
A few sites in southern Puglia and Basilicata were also enclosed and sometimes sub-divided by stone walls, although the published evidence here is less clear. For example, at the earlier Neolithic settlement of Fondo Azzolini near Bisceglie (central Puglia), dated to the late seventh and early sixth millennia BC, a settlement enclosure wall, perhaps extending over a distance of 70m, runs across a slightly sloping plateau towards a large doline, the Pulo di Molfetta (Radina 2002). The wall is around 2m wide and formed by two parallel rows of large limestone slabs and a fill of smaller stones. At earlier Neolithic Trasano in Basilicata, two smaller walls, between 0.85 and 1.3m wide, divided the settlement into two sectors (Guilaine and Cremonesi 1987). This tradition of walling was also maintained into the later Neolithic, as indicated by the enclosure wall built around the three most defensively vulnerable sides of Sant’Anna near Oria in southern Puglia (Ingravallo 1997).
CENTRAL ITALY
A simplified version of the well-established south Italian ditch digging tradition also spread north, from the late sixth millennium BC, with the selective transmission of the ‘Neolithic package’ from south-east to central Italy via pioneer colonist farmers and indigenous groups of Mesolithic ancestry. But only around five ditched sites have been excavated, both east of the Apennines (in Abruzzo and Marche) and to the west (in Umbria and northern Lazio). Little is known about their construction and use, and whether the many other Neolithic sites in this region were also enclosed in some way. The earliest known example is the small, discontinuous ditch at the Adriatic Impressed Ware site of San Marco near Gubbio in Umbria, dated to between the mid-sixth and mid-fifth millennia BC (Malone and Stoddart 1992). It was 1.5m wide, and a set of large ceramic containers was deposited in it. A later example is the huge ditch partly surrounding the late Neolithic settlement of Ripoli in the Vibrata Valley in northern Abruzzo (Cremonesi 1965). The ditch measured up to 4.8m deep and 7.5m wide, and incorporated the edge of the Pleistocene terrace upon which the site lay. Its size may have helped to express the social prominence of the nucleated community it enclosed, which stands out from contemporary sites in east-central Italy through its extent, its relatively high proportion of prestigious cattle, its distinctive and influential style of fine painted pottery, its import of a wide range of valuable goods, and its long duration. At various points in its history, one side of this ditch collapsed, and another section was recut to make the ditch deeper, wider, and straighter. Eventually, the ditch was filled with settlement debris. In the final Neolithic, a line of ten ditches was also cut across the middle of the ancestral site and filled with the remains of more than 45 adults and one child.
NORTHERN ITALY
Another variety of enclosures was constructed by communities, belonging to a series of hybrid colonist and indigenous cultural traditions, around large villages in the more temperate and forested environment of northern Italy. Here, some eleven enclosed sites have been excavated, both to the south of the Po Valley (in the Emilia-Romagna) and to the north-east (in Veneto, Trentino, and Friuli). How representative or exceptional these sites are in terms of north Italian Neolithic settlement forms is unclear, since they are also amongst the most extensively excavated sites in the region.
At a few early Neolithic sites in Emilia-Romagna, where potters conformed to the east-central Italian Adriatic Impressed Ware style, villagers followed the southern tradition of ditched enclosures, although they more often incorporated and modified natural ditches as part of these. This is particularly clear at Fornacce Cappuccini near Faenza, where archaeologists uncovered a 680m-long semi-circular section of a wide ditch surrounding an extensive settlement (Antoniazzi et al. 1987). Here, the ditch-diggers joined, straightened, and widened sections of a pre-existing natural channel eroded into alluvial deposits. During the early and middle Neolithic, this structure was then gradually filled with domestic debris from adjacent living areas.
But large wooden palisades, combined with ditches and/or earth walls, were more commonly constructed by villagers belonging to the more northern-oriented early Neolithic Fiorano Culture in Emilia-Romagna and to successive cultural traditions. For example, at the vast Squared-Mouthed Pottery Culture (VBQ) settlement of La Vela near Trento, dated to the fifth millennium BC, the middle Neolithic community strengthened the pre-existing early Neolithic enclosure ditch by inserting large vertical wooden elements into it and packing large stones around their bases (Degasperi et al. 2006). At the Fiorano Culture site of Lugo di Romagna, dated to the second half of the fifth millennium BC, the villagers used all three elements to delimit their settlement (Degasperi et al. 1996) (Fig. 41.4). A slightly curving 20m section of a large palisade was uncovered here, formed by 3m long and 0.6m wide planks of longitudinally split oak set vertically, one against the other, into a foundation trench packed with clay. This trench also contained the anatomically connected right foot of a dog, covered by a decorated ceramic jug, interpreted as evidence of a foundation rite. Four metres outside this, regularly spaced post holes may indicate a wall of wood and earth. Beyond this, a series of intersecting elongated pits formed a small ditch, 1m wide and 0.6m deep, whose contents may have been used to construct the wall. By contrast, at the VBQ settlement of La Razza di Campegine near Reggio Emilia the enclosure was formed exclusively by a wooden palisade (Bernabò-Brea et al. 2003). One side of this measures just over 300m long, and comprises 215 largely equidistant cylindrical post holes. The grand human scale of these palisaded enclosures, including their environmental impact, their laborious construction, their monumental final form, and—in the case of Lugo di Romagna—its spectacular destruction by fire, should therefore not be underestimated.
FIG. 41.4. Reconstruction drawing of an enclosure, formed by a palisade, wall and ditch, at Lugo di Romagna near Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna (after Degasperi et al. 1996).
The north Italian enclosures drew, then, a bold line around the living areas and domestic life of well-established communities. Inside, settlement features include numerous pits, some ditches, shallow channels, and post holes, rare human burials, and a few rectangular wattle-and-daub houses. At Lugo di Romagna internal structures included a two-roomed rectangular house, measuring 10 by 7m, with a timber frame and wattle-and-daub walls (Degasperi et al. 1996). At some sites, occasional smaller internal enclosures have also been defined, in the form of palisades set in foundation trenches or, in one case, a cobble-and-clay wall. For example, at the later Neolithic VBQ settlement of Monte Rocca near Rivoli di Verona, an interrupted ditch alignment, running for 22m across the middle of the site, has been interpreted as the foundations for a palisade effectively dividing the settlement in two equal halves (Barfield 2002).
All these enclosures comprised permeable boundaries, crossed by people and their resources. For example, a series of 2m-wide entrances were identified at the palisade at La Razza di Campegine. At the Fiorano Culture settlement of Lugo di Grezzana near Verona, symbolic attention was drawn to the significance of an entrance by depositing a rare fragment of the foot of a ceramic anthropomorphic figurine in a post hole flanking a gap in the palisade (Cavulli and Pedrotti 2001). Passing in and out these key access points, members of the bounded communities maintained a two-way flow of essential resources between their inner living areas and the wider world to which they were connected. The enclosures and their entrances channelled this flow in a regulated manner, at the same time constraining the movement of people and information.
CONCLUSION
In Neolithic Italy, enclosures were intimately related to the domestic practices, cultural traditions, and long-term histories of settled agricultural communities and their constituent households. The origins of this practice, found mainly in the eastern regions of peninsular Italy and Sicily, can ultimately be traced to the Balkans, and contrasted with the more ceremonial use of uninhabited monumental enclosures in central and north-west Europe. This tradition determined that almost all settlements were enclosed on the Tavoliere, right from the start of the Neolithic, and then aga
in and again in a dynamic process of construction, reconstruction, and abandonment, until the underlying principle of nucleated settlement eventually became obsolete. But here and elsewhere in Italy laborious acts of enclosure were also selective, mobilized as part of local strategies of spatial ordering, defence, and differentiation. Ditches were the most widespread construction, but varied locally over space and time, whilst regional variations in culture and environment afforded the greater use of stone walls in the relatively open landscape of the south and the erection of wooden palisades and earth walls in the north. Local topographic features, ranging from water channels to scarp-edges, were sometimes incorporated into the enclosures, as were special deposits highlighting their liminality and history. These physically and symbolically significant structures moulded the lives, experiences, and perceptions of the variety of people—differentiated by age, gender, household, and community—who permeated their boundaries to communicate with the wider world and to return home to the places where they belonged.
REFERENCES
Antoniazzi, A., Bagolini, B., Bermond Montanari, G., Massi Pasi, M., and Prati, L. 1987. Il Neolitico di Fornace Cappuccini a Faenza e la Ceramica Impressa in Romagna. In A. Revedin (ed.), Atti della XXVI Riunione Scientifica dell’IIPP. Il Neolitico in Italia. Volume II, 553–564. Florence: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Bernabò-Brea, M., Bronzoni, L., Cremaschi, M., and Trombino, L. 2003. Il villaggio Neolitico alla Razza di Campegine. In Atti del Convegno ‘Archeologia ad alta velocità in EmiliaRomagna’: Indagini archeologiche e geologiche lungo il tracciato dell’alta velocità. Available at http://www.archeobo.arti.beniculturali.it/pdf/bernabo1.pdf
Bianco, S. and Cipolloni-Sampò, M. 1987. Il Neolitico della Basilicata. In A. Revedin (ed.), Atti della XXVI Riunione Scientifica dell’IIPP. Il Neolitico in Italia. Volume I, 301–320. Florence: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Barfield, L.H. 2002. An interrupted ditch alignment at Rivoli, Italy, in the context of Neolithic interrupted ditch/pit systems. In G. Varndell and P. Topping (eds), Enclosures in Neolithic Europe: essays on causewayed and non-causewayed sites, 59–61. Oxford: Oxbow.
Bradford, J.S.P. 1950. The Apulia expedition: an interim report. Antiquity 94, 84–95.
Bradford, J.S.P. and Williams Hunt, P.R. 1946. Siticulosa Apulia. Antiquity 80, 191–200.
Brown, K. 1991a. A passion for excavation: labour requirements and possible functions for the ditches of the ‘Villaggi Trincerati’ of the Tavoliere, Apulia. Accordia Research Papers 2, 7–30.
Brown, K. 1991b. Settlement distribution and social organisation in the Neolithic of the Tavoliere, Apulia. In E. Herring, R. Whitehouse, and J. Wilkins (eds), Papers of the fourth conference of Italian archaeology. The archaeology of power, part 1, 9–25. London: Accordia Research Centre.
Camerini, V. and Lionetti, G. 1995. Villaggi trincerati Neolitici negli Agri di Matera- Santeramo-Laterza. Matera: Grafiche Paternoster.
Cassano, S.M. and Manfredini, A. (eds) 1983. Studi sul Neolitico del Tavoliere della Puglia: indagine territoriale in un’area-campione. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Cassano, S.M., Cazzella, A., Manfredini, A., and Moscoloni, M. (eds) 1987. Coppa Nevigata e il suo territorio: testimonianze archeologiche dal VII al II millennio a.C. Rome: Edizioni Quasar.
Castellana, G. 1986. Il villaggio Neolitico di Piano Vento nel territorio di Palma di Montechiaro: rapporto preliminare. In Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici Agrigento and Associazione Archeologica Licatese (eds), Atti della seconda giornata di studi sull’archeologia licatese e della zona della bassa valle dell’Himera, 9–67. Licata: Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici Agrigento and Associazione Archeologica Licatese.
Cavulli, F. and Pedrotti, A. 2001. L’insediamento del Neolitico antico di Lugo di Grezzana: la palizzata lignea. Preistoria Alpina 37, 11–24.
Ciminale, M., Becker, H., and Gallo, D. 2007. Integrated technologies for archaeological investigation: the Celone Valley project. Archaeological Prospection 14, 167–181.
Cipolloni-Sampò, M. 1987. Aspetti e problemi della cronologia del Neolitico antico in Italia meridionale: l’insediamento Neolitico sull’Olivento (Valle dell’Ofanto—Basilicata). In A.Revedin (ed.), Atti della XXVI Riunione Scientifica dell’IIPP. Il Neolitico in Italia. Volume II, 697–705. Florence: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Costantini, L. and Tozzi, C. 1987. Un gisement a Céramique Imprimée dans le subapennin de la Daunia (Lucera, Foggia): le village de Ripa Tetta. Économie et culture matérielle. In J. Guilaine, J. Courtin, J.-L. Roudil, and J.-L. Vernet (eds), Premières communautés paysannes en Méditerranée occidentale: actes du colloque international, 387–394. Paris: CNRS.
Cremonesi, G. 1965. Il villaggio di Ripoli alla luce dei recenti scavi. Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 20, 85–155.
Darvill, T. and Thomas, J. 2001. Neolithic enclosures in northwest Europe: some recent trends. In T. Darvill and J. Thomas (eds), Neolithic enclosures in northwest Europe, 1–23. Oxford: Oxbow.
Degasperi, N., Ferrari, A., and Steffè, G. 1996. L’insediamento Neolitico di Fornace Gattelli a Lugo di Romagna. Fosignano: Grafiche Morandi.
Degasperi, N., Mottes, E., and Rottoli, M. 2006. Recenti indagini nel sito Neolitico de La Vela di Trento. In A. Pessina and P. Visentini (eds), Preistoria dell’Italia settentrionale. Studi in ricordo di Bernardino Bagolini. Atti del convegno, 143–168. Udine: Museo Friulano di Storia Naturale.
De Juliis, E.M. 1972. Scavo di una capanna preistorica in località ‘Casone’ (San Severo, Foggia). Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 27, 117–144.
Delano-Smith, C. 1987. The Neolithic environment of the Tavoliere. In G.D.B. Jones (ed.), Apulia, volume I: Neolithic settlement in the Tavoliere, 1–26. London: Society of Antiquaries of London.
Denston, C.B. 1987. The skeletal material from Fonteviva. In G.D.B. Jones (ed.), Apulia, volume I: Neolithic settlement in the Tavoliere, 207–210. London: Society of Antiquaries of London.
Geniola, A. 1987. Stratigrafia comparata delle grotte cultuali di S. Barbara (Polignano a Mare) e di Cala Colombo e Cala Scizzo (Torre a Mare, Bari). In A. Revedin (ed.), Atti della XXV Riunione Scientifica dell’IIPP: preistoria e protostoria della Puglia centrale, 279–295. Florence: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Guilaine, J. and Cremonesi, G. 1987. L’habitat Néolithique de Trasano (Matera, Basilicate): premiers résultats. In A. Revedin (ed.), Atti della XXVI Riunione Scientifica dell’IIPP. Il Neolitico in Italia. Volume II, 707–719. Florence: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Guilaine, J., Simone, L., Thommeret, J., and Thommeret, Y. 1981. Datations C14 pour le Néolithique du Tavoliere (Italie). Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 78, 154–160.
Hamilton, S. and Whitehouse, R. 2006. Phenomenology in practice: towards a methodology for a ‘subjective approach’. European Journal of Archaeology 9, 31–71.
Hedges, R.E.M., Housley, R., Law, I.A., and Bronk, C.R. 1989. Radiocarbon dates from the Oxford AMS system: Archaeometry datelist 9. Archaeometry 31, 207–234.
Ingravallo, E. 1997. ‘Sant’Anna (Oria). In E. Ingravallo (ed.), La passione dell’origine: Giuliano Cremonesi e la ricerca preistorica nel Salento, 135–156. Lecce: Conte.
Jones, G.D.B. 1987. Apulia, volume I: Neolithic settlement in the Tavoliere. London: Society of Antiquaries of London.
La Rosa, V. 1987. Un nuovo insediamento Neolitico a Serra del Palco di Milena (CL). In A. Revedin (ed.), Atti della XXVI Riunione Scientifica dell’IIPP. Il Neolitico in Italia. Volume II, 801–808. Florence: Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria.
Lo Porto, F.G. 1998. I villaggi preistorici di Murgia Timone e Murgecchia nel Materano. Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider.
Mallory, J.P. 1984–7. Lagnano da Piede I: an early Neolithic village in the Tavoliere. Origini 13, 193–290.
Malone, C. and Stoddart, S. 1992. The Neolithic site of San Marco, Gubbio (Perugia), Umbria: survey and excavation, 1985–7. Papers of the Br
itish School at Rome 60, 1–69.