ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE ZONE OF MACERATA.
PRE-HISTORIC AND PROTO-HISTORIC EXCAVATIONS AND FINDINGS IN THE BORDERING AREAS OF THE PROVINCE. THE CASES OF PIEVETORINA, MUCCIA AND THE HIGH VALLEY OF FIASTRONE
by Paolo Cruciani
In the upper Macerata it’s been very little, in main lines, archaelogical excavations carried out with scientific criteria and, consequently, rather little the findings have come out in what concerns to the most remote civilization. Even if the problem of possible dynamics installed in the territory of Fiastrone is still to deepen, it’s hypothetical that there haven’t existed many human establishments: it’s certain that the zones of mountain didn’t offer - by its own geophysical conformation, as well as by the calmless climate - suitable life expectancies, but at the present point of the investigations we cannot absolutely exclude the possibility of human presence even in the upper part of the valley.
The little excavations made systematically are limited to the areas of the interior of the valley, the most interesting for the human presence. The archaeological places nearer to the zones of our investigations are Maddalena di Muccia and Pievetorina.
In Maddalena di Muccia were found between 1962 and 1965 some handmade articles in obsidian, others in terra-cotta with ordinary decorations to the natural (stained with the fingers, scratches, tweaked, great points, circles, everything distributed freely), objects in bone, as well as rests of young animals and hunts, whose analysis led to a chronological location between the 5760 and the 5255 b.C. (Neolithic); one of the most interesting findings found in the course of this excavation is a skeleton of a woman of near 1.50 meters of height, one of the few referred branchicefal known in this period in Italy. In Pievetorina, in the district of Lucciano, in the excavations made between 1970 and 1974, came out a neolithic establishment to a large extent destroyed and changed by the excavation of burial graves of a picen necropolis. Under such establishment was found a layer, dating from the mesolithic period, with little lithic industry that included, among others, double ends of two faces (Sauveterre type), triangles, half moons and trapezes. They aren’t in fact abundant and accurately located findings in the valley of Chienti, even in the piedmont zone, a sensibly less "inhabited place" with respect to the upper valley of the Fiastrone.
The findings that come out in the first half of the 20th Century in Fiastra came about, on the contrary, as purely fortuitous discoveries: near Casigno, in the vicinities of the bifurcation that from the suburb Poggio of Fiastra takes to Fiegni, they was discovered in 1922 an amphora varnished in black and a bronze hemisphere with images of Minerva imprisoned, dated in the Aeneolithic, and later transferred to the National Archaeological Museum of Marche. In the neighborhoods of the suburb of Colle, near the bridge of Rio, a quarry of gravel revealed between 1946 and 1950 abundant archaeological material, that later was lost and destroyed; in the lake of San Lorenzo, in the environs of the lacustrine river basin, during the tasks for the excavation of the same river basin in 1950, were found rests of one necropolis dating from the hellenistic era with human rests, handmade articles of bronze, leaves from one high adriatic oinochoe and one sculpture, identified like Giunione Regina and dated in the 3rd Century b.C. The ceramics, in gray purified mass, present black varnish tracks, whereas the metallic objects are a point of a spear and a pair of iron scissors to prune, and one jar plated in bronze. At the moment, rests of these important findings (some objects had been lost) are guarded in the Archaeological Civic Museum of Camerino.
These discoveries have opened a new page on the origins of the human presence in the valley of the Fiastrone. It’s to think, therefore, that a work carried out under scientific criteria could decisively bring forward the relative chronology and could offer new and decisive contributions to the aims of a deeper knowledge on the territory in the more remote eras.
The territories of Acquacanina and Bolognola have not been still explored, at least at the moment, from an archaeological point of view. In the case of Bolognola, it can be referred to as one of the less specified that had been accidentally discovered in the Seventies. Domenico Fransconi mentioned it in Bolognola: “History – Testimonies – Documents” (Macerata, 1982), towards which he nourishes a substantial scepticism, cannot have historical – archaeological value: since then and far thirty years this fact still have not been verified or published, and no one, apart from the anonymous author of the discovery, has been able to see the findings materially. The territorial vicinity between the zones of Bolognola and mainly of Acquacanina with the one of San Lorenzo of Fiastra, without leaving the representing objective data of the difference of altitude and the relative climatic changes – environmental conditions – it’s the case of Bolognola – doesn’t allow to exclude absolutely that these territories could also be object of human presence at pre-Historic and proto-Historic time. There aren’t rests of the picens in the valley of the Fiastrone, civilization still of contradictory origins, bloomed during the Age of the Iron (the 9th-3th centuries b.C.), ahilst some findings leading to them have been discovered in the vicinities of Pievebovigliana, in the old valley of the Fornace torrent (formerly Bovellianum): it’s the well-known wake of Fiordimonte (of end of 4th century b.C.), carrier of a right-twist inscription, probably the tympanum of a tomb.
The archaeological excavation of Pievetorina has came out a picen necropolis (dated in the Picen Age III, that’s to say, in the period between the 700 and the 580 b.C.) superimposed to a preexisting mesolithic establishment. In addition, still in the vicinities of the valley object of our investigation, it’s necessary to mention, again in territory of Pievebovigliana, an establishment in the summit of the mount San Savino, that goes back to the 5th century b.C., with rests of structures of walls and a floor as well as of numerous fragments of ceramics, while the suburb of San Maroto (locality of Gagliesi) has revealed handmade articles dated by Boccanera to the end of the Age of the Iron, next to graves perhaps of the pre-Roman age.
The romanization of the Picen takes place between the 3rd and 1st centuries b.C.; the Roman establishments of verified origin are all inland the valley (to approximate us to the area of our investigation, Pievebovigliana and San Maroto), since the proximity to the main routes of communication was made a necessary condition. There are numerous signs of the Roman presence throughout the main routes of Salaria and Flaminia; the inner valleys, specifically the one of Fiastrone and the highest part of the one of Fornace, seem to have been less frequented because they lacked, back then, of road openings. To the already mentioned discoveries of Pievebovigliana and San Maroto they’ve been added, in this last locality, some findings that could be indicative of human presence at the Roman period: rests of a possible paving of the streets and of the sewage system and basins in terra-cotta of great dimensions, today kept in the interior of the base of the bell tower in the romanesque church of San Giusto; anyway these are zones in where the "romanization" is documented more directly. The valley of Fiastrone presents, in this sense, an easiest lecture. The already mentioned statue found in the bottom of the lake of Fiastra (the 3rd Century b.C.) could be a handmade article, as well as the elements in the crypt of the church of San Marco in Colpolina (Fiastra, district of San Marco: the columns that separate the naves from the crypts, the landmark of replacement for the altar of this one and three re-usable Roman pieces re-used as the holy-water basin in the church): the liturgical object has been obtained with the juxtaposition of a capital overturned by the base, a fragment of the shaft of the column and a marble basin. But as it’s been said for the pre-History and the proto-History, the absence of excavations in the zone of the valley at the moment doesn’t allow to take definitive positions, but it rather presents the problem in positive key. |
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