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The Apulia Expedition: An Interim Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

J. S. P. Bradford
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Abstract

The first (1949) season of archaeological reconnaissance on the Foggia Plain in South Italy has confirmed, in the most striking manner, the existence of one of the densest concentrations of ancient sites to be identified in Europe in an area of comparable size. For readers of ANTIQUITY, their nature had already been foreshadowed in these pages.

These discoveries were first made from British air photographs taken in June 1945, which revealed the plans of settlements, farms, roads and field-systems existing below the surface of the ground or clearly visible to the air camera. They were distributed across 3000 years of Italian history, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, and illustrate from the archaeological record three principal stages in the rise of a European peasantry. This is a theme that affords ideal ground for the conjunction of Archaeology and Ethnology ; and it is appropriate that the Expedition should be based on the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, which was founded on this very principle.

Now, thanks to the Apulia Committee, set up under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries and representing the University of Oxford and learned societies, it has been possible to proceed to the second and fundamental stage:—namely, to carry out the first systematic programme of archaeological investigation based on air photographic data ever conducted in Italy. This also included the first British excavations there for a number of years, with the permission and helpful co-operation of the Italian authorities, and the support of the British School at Rome.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 24 , Issue 94 , June 1950 , pp. 84 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1950

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References

1 ANTIQUITY, December 1946 and June 1949.

2 We wish gratefully to acknowledge the valuable help received from His Excellency the Italian Ambassador, and Dr Montanari of the Embassy ; from the Director-General of Antiquities and Fine Arts in the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction (Dr G. de Angelis D’Ossat) ; from the Superintendent of Antiquities for Apulia (Prof. C. Drago) who greatly facilitated the work ; from Sig. Argardio Campi and his staff ; and from Sig. Fernando Pavoni.

My particular thanks are due to Professor C. F. C. Hawkes, Mr I. D. Margary, Mr T. K. Penniman, and Professor R. E. M. Wheeler (Chairman of the Apulia Committee) ; and also to my wife for all her help before, during and after the Expedition and in the preparation of the plans.

3 ANTIQUITY, December 1946, plate in ; and see site plan, ibid, June 1949, p. 63, fig. E.

4 Also shaped tabular fragments of baked clay with a smooth upper surface, probably used in the preparation of food. These are unusual, but in the south Sudan oval grinding stones of baked clay (used with a wooden roller) are found today among the Nuer, in a region lacking stone (see Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, p. 170, fig. 12).

5 The volcanic mass of Monte Vultore, in the Apennines to the south west is the usually accepted source.

6 R. B. K. Stevenson’s periods I and II ; see Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 1947, p. 85 et seq.

7 Cp. Hans Lehner, ‘Der Festungsbau der jüngeren Steinzeit’, Praehistorische Zeitschrift, II (1910), 1-23 ; Childe, The Danube in Prehistory ; Curwen, ANTIQUITY, IV, 22-54.

8 E.g., the incorporation of earlier tracks as boundaries for the systems ; see ANTIQUITY, June 1949, p. 67, fig. 2.

9 These we hope to be able to equate with the land assigned and centuriated round the towns of Lucerla, Aecae, Ausculum, Canusium, Herdonia, etc., mentioned in the Libri Regionum ; cf. Pais, Storia della Colonizzazione di Roma Antica, 1923. Pais argued that the ascription of much of this to the Gracchan period was reasonable, although the absence (as was then believed) of surface traces had thrown doubt on all these entries.

10 Near Posta di Colle, 4½ miles east of Lucera, excavation gave the same dimensions for other tree pits of this kind. These appeared on the ground as patches of extra tall wild plants. Lines of them were interspersed between the rows of Roman vine-trenches (as small fruit trees are today) in a neat ‘plantation’ along a centuriated road, directly opposite a Roman farm-enclosure.

11 On the ‘pasture’ land on this abandoned airfield there were long continuous stretches of centuriated Roman road, each easily traceable for half a mile on the ground.

12 The only comparable parallel is the sanded-over centuriation in Southern Tunisia.

13 See ANTIQUITY, December 1947, ‘A Technique for the study of Centuriation’, for air-photographs of these.

14 See Caraballese, Il Comune pugliese durante la Monarchia Normanno-Sveva and L’Apulia ed il suo Comune nell’alto medio evo (vol. 15 and 7, Documenti e Monografie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Puglia, Laterza, Bari).

15 See Domenico Vendola, Studi e Testi, vol. 84. Rationes Decimarum Italiae.

16 I should like to thank Mr G. C. Dunning and Mr Martyn Jope for advice in this matter.

17 C. H. Morgan, Corinth, vol. XI, The Byzantine Pottery. Cambridge, Mass., 1942.

18 C. N. John, Quarterly of the Dept. of Antiquities in Palestine, vol. III, 1934, 137 seq., and vol. V, 31 seq. On the other hand, parallels from Cyprus are vaguely general rather than particular ; see du Plat Taylor and Megaw, Report of the Dept. of Antiquities, Cyprus, 1937-39 (publ. 1949) ‘Cypriot Glazed Medieval Pottery’.

19 Similarities with finds from Byzantium itself are generic though sometimes rather faint. The crude but lively ‘white painted ware’ illustrated by D. Talbot Rice, Byzantine Glazed Pottery, plate XII, assigned to the 13th or 14th centuries, is analogous but simpler ; for stratified, and datable, material see Martiny, Stevenson and Brett, The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors, 1947, but it does not seem to provide the prototypes for the Apulian developments.

20 That such close links existed ceramically at Lucera can be seen in pottery of this period from the Castle, especially in those jugs with filters inside the neck which also occur at Fostat, the site of earlier Cairo, and these must be a direct import (cp. Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery, 1947, plate 36, D, E). They are in Lucera Museum.

21 For vertical air-photograph showing its plan, see ANTIQUITY, June 1949, plate VI.

22 It is mentioned in documents of the Norman period and still ranked as an arcipretura or pieve, liable for Papal Tenths in the early 14th century.

23 See air photograph in ANTIQUITY, June 1949, plate vb.

24 Cp. Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, 1930, p. 476.