GNGTS 2015 - Atti del 34° Convegno Nazionale

40 GNGTS 2015 S essione 1.1 The late third century BC event (Santo Stefano sanctuary area). Due to the presence of everlasting soil creep and earth flow, the sacred area of Santo Stefano (NE of Buccino), occupied since the 8 th century BC, actually provided not-univocal indication of coseismic damage. However, these might consist of widespread collapses and destruction layers of 4 th century BC buildings, indicating an abrupt end of the settlement on the terraces occupied by the sanctuary and by the necropolis in the last decades of the 3 rd century BC. In the uppermost terrace, a farm was built over the sanctuary walls, suggesting the overall abandonment of the sacred site, which was successively buried by alluvial and colluvial deposits. The first century AD event (Volcei). During the reconstruction works following the 1980 earthquake, many indications of coeval collapses, butti (stacks of archeological debris), fills and leveling of destroyed buildings were found everywhere in Buccino. Moreover, there was evidence of restoring and/or rebuilding of several houses, with the reutilization of architectural elements from the previous buildings, such as architraves and epigraphs, beside the existence of a coeval epigraph mentioning explicitly the restoration made after a collapse due to an earthquake. In the whole, all the indications point to an event falling in the second half of the 1 st century AD, as summarized in the forthcoming points (see Fig. 2 for sites location). • Forcella palace. Here the indications consist in a dumping grave containing domestic pottery (lamps and dishes) datable within the first half of the 1 st centuryAD. As no sigillata chiara A pottery (early second half of 1 st century AD) was found within the grave, the dumping age should falls at the onset of the second half of the 1 st century AD. • Castle. Over the southern side of the main 12 th century Norman tower (i.e., Mastio , resting over the basement of a Roman temple), the excavations found a broad, wall-supported rubble fill, made by domestic material, bricks, tiles and limestone blocks. The fill, which was sealed upward by a concrete pouring, contains sigillata italica and Africana chiara A pottery, the latter datable at the end of the 1 st century AD (max 60-70 AD). At the bottom of the fill, a coin of Emperor Tiberius (23-30 AD) provides a certain post quem term for Fig. 1 – Historical earthquakes distribution and seismogenic faults around Buccino/ Volcei. Note the epicenters cluster in the hanging wall of the Mount Marzano Fault System(MMFS), which is responsible for the strongest earth shaking in Buccino, together with the Caggiano Fault (CF) and the still unknown structure that sourced the Mw 7.1, 1857 earthquake (outside this map). Normal faults accommodate NE-SW extension (see 1980, 1996 focal mechanisms), currently rated at ~3 mm/yr by GPS studies (from Galli and Peronace, 2014).