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Excavation

  • Monte San Nicola
  • Pietravairano
  •  
  • Italy
  • Campania
  • Province of Caserta
  • Vairano Patenora

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Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • This campaign, May 2007 to February 2008, saw the complete exposure of the temple building, the terracing on which it stands and part of the cavea of the theatre below. The investigations definitively proved that the structures were part of a single complex, conceived as such from the first construction phases. Important evidence regarding the temple’s architectural decoration, the abandonment of the sanctuary, the subsequent re-occupation phases of in the area was documented, and the first epigraphic evidence from the sanctuary was found.

    The excavation of the upper terrace and the temple clarified its plan and typological characteristics. About 11.54 m long and 13.62 m wide, it was a Tuscan type temple with a triple cella and a tetrastyle façade (with tile-built columns), built with a certain adhesion to Vitruvian architectural canons.

    Thirteen burials were uncovered in the excavation area, mainly situated up against or close to the temple’s south wall. Either without grave goods or with extremely small assemblages, the tombs document the abandonment and defunctionalisation of the theatre-temple complex, as well as the subsequent re-occupation of the site.
    Tomb 7, an “a cappucina” type burial, produced a bronze aes mentioning the fourth consulship and the fifteenth tribunicia potestas of Antoninus Pius (151-152 A.D.). Therefore, the sanctuary complex would seem to have lost its original function perhaps as early as the mid 2nd century A.D.
    However, occupation of the site continued in the medieval period. This was attested by the materials from three other burials, such as a bronze “basket” earring with a glass pendent from tomb 8, and, above all, the bronze open ring fibula, with volute terminals, found in tomb 13, similar to types widespread in early medieval contexts in Campania and southern Italy. Further evidence was provided by the later pottery fragments found close to the central cella of the temple, and the remains of a chapel built on what remains of the ancient skenè, dedicated, according to local tradition, to San Nicola.

    As regards the theatre, the excavations uncovered the tiers of the upper and middle parts of the cavea hemicycle (radius c. 21.5 m), built exploiting the natural slope, and delimited by containing walls (_analèmmata_) in local limestone opus incertum.
    A wide passageway (_diàzoma_) separated the upper part of the cavea from the middle part, while three steps divided the tiers visible at present into four wedges.
    The tiers are relatively well-preserved, although the actual seat surfaces have not survived. The excavation of this sector of the monumental complex produced fragments of the architectural decoration from the temple above and two examples of a Latin tile stamp, attesting the production activity of a workshop belonging to the gens of the Aufidii.

  • Gianluca Tagliamonte - Università del Salento 

Director

  • Francesco Sirano - Soprintendenza per i beni Archeologici delle Province di Napoli e Caserta

Team

  • Antonella Natali – Università del Salento
  • Dario Panariti – Università del Salento
  • Luigi Cinque – Università del Salento
  • Luciano M. Rendina

Research Body

  • Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici delle Province di Napoli e Caserta
  • Università del Salento

Funding Body

  • Comune di Pietravairano nell’ambito del P(iano) I(ntegrato) T(erritoriale) “Direttrice Monti Trebulani-Matese” (P.O.R. Campania 2000/2006).

Images

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