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  • S. Gilio
  • S. Gilio
  •  
  • Italy
  • Basilicate
  • Province of Potenza
  • Oppido Lucano

Credits

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Monuments

Periods

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Chronology

  • 80 BC - 250 AD
  • 350 AD - 700 AD

Season

    • In the locality of S. Gilio, not far from the modern centre of Oppido Lucano and close to an important road which linked inland Lucania with Apulia, stands an imposing Roman villa on a series of terraces overlooking the upper Bradano valley. The residential complex was built over the entire eastern side of the hill covering an area of circa 6.200m2. Today the monumental remains relating to the basis villae, two large bath buildings, a fountain/drinking trough and a series of cisterns (castellum aquae) are still visible. The villa was occupied from the beginning of the 1st century B.C. until the early medieval period with changeable phases of fortune. After a period of continuous development lasting until the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. the villa was partly destroyed by fire. From the second half of the 4th A.D. century onwards the structure was again monumentalised and enriched with geometric polychrome mosaic floors, copies of African designs reproduced by local craftsmen. In this phase part of the bath complex was restructured and took on domestic and productive functions. As regards the social-cultural situation there was evidence for the presence of individuals of Christian and perhaps Hebrew faith. Following its abandonment in the in the mid 6th century the site was sporadically occupied until the 7th century A.D. The long occupation of the site, the monumental structures and building techniques used, the quality of the finds and the evidence from inscriptions on funerary slabs and on the _instrumentum domesticum_ suggest that the villa belonged to an important members of the urban and local elite. Probable owners may have been P.Veidius Pollio, a knight in the circle of _Augustus_, who died in 15 B.C., and members of the _gens Valeria_ and perhaps the _gens Iunia_. (Helga Di Giuseppe)

Bibliography

    • H. Di Giuseppe, 1996, Insediamenti rurali della Basilicata interna tra la romanizzazione e l'età tardoantica: materiali per una tipologia, in M. Pani (ed.), Epigrafia e Territorio. Politica e società. Temi di antichità romane IV: 189-252.
    • H. Di Giuseppe, 1997, La villa di San Gilio, in Archeo, n. 1 (143), Gennaio: 14.
    • H. Di Giuseppe, C. Capelli, 2005, Produzioni urbane e rurali di ceramica comune dipinta nella Lucania tardoantica e altomedievale, in J.Ma. Gurt i Esparraguera, J. Buxeda i Garrigós, M.A. Cau Ontiveros (a cura di), LRCW1. Late Roman Corse Wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean. Archaeology and Archaeometry, (Barcellona, 14-16 marzo 2002), BAR International Series 1340: 395-411.
    • M.L. Nava, 1997, L’attività archeologica in Basilicata nel 1996, in Mito e storia in Magna Grecia, Atti del XXXVI Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia (Taranto 1996), Taranto: 455-494.
    • H. Di Giuseppe, 2008, La villa romana di S. Gilio (Oppido Lucano-PZ) tra aristocrazie urbane e locali, in A. Russo-H. Di Giuseppe (a cura di), Felicitas Temporum. Dalla Terra alle genti. La Basilicata settentrionale tra archeologia e storia, Lavello (PZ): 305-353.