GNGTS 2015 - Atti del 34° Convegno Nazionale

GNGTS 2015 S essione 1.1 43 path around the castle. It is difficult to provide a certain age for this earthquake, mainly because of the paucity of the Early Middle Age pottery. However, it could be constrained between the 7 th -8 th and the 12t h century, even if we cannot exclude the occurrence of multiple events within this time span. ��� ��� �� ����������� ��� �� ���������� �� ������� The set of indications can be summarized as follow. • Amendola square. The excavations have revealed the synchronous collapse of all the building surviving since the Late Roman times. Below the rubbles it has been possible to read the frozen history of these houses, with the different rezoning of each room during times, the wall restorations, the floors overlapping, the doorstep reutilization. The collapse affected all the masonry wall, the pillars of the porticus and the roofs which have been all found directly overlaying the floors (Fig. 3, right panel). This catastrophic collapse buried definitely also the Decumanus which was still in use and well mainteined at least during the 7 th century, as testified by the materials found in the ditches. At first glance, the collapse killed also a small sheep which was hit and buried by the rubble on the road basoli . The AMS collagen dating provided an age of 1034-1214 AD (2� ������ ������ ��� ���������� σ cal.). Inside the porticated building, beside the wall-plasters, the incannucciato ceiling, tiles and the masonry, it was possible to observe some walls and the four bricks-pillars which fell away from the road, burying bande rosse pottery (used all along the Early Middle Age). • Salimbene house. An Early MiddleAge cobble-wall was founded inside the fill burying the Roman buildings (Fig. 3). The pottery shards inside the foundation trench is the same as in Amendola Square, i.e. it contains bande rosse pottery. Therefore, this wall - successively collapsed over a nearby room - might suggest the onset of the reconstruction of the Early Middle Age Buccino after and over the earthquake rubble. As aforementioned, the dating of these collapses is problematic. Indeed, whereas the pottery shards involved and buried by the collapses predate the second millennium, the AMS dating of the sheep buried under the rubble indicates the onset of the new millennium. This might suggest that an event occurred between the uppermost and lowermost limits of the two terms, i.e around 1000 AD. Indeed, on October 25, 989, a powerful earthquake hit this region (see Figliuolo and Marturano, 2002). Damage was recorded up to Ariano Irpino, and to the far- away town of Benevento. The strongest effects were focused on the broad upper Ofanto Valley, where coeval sources are complemented by archaeoseismic evidence, and supported in places also by radiocarbon dating of materials buried under the collapses (Galli, 2010). This suggests that Conza, Ronza, Montella, Rocca San Felice, Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi, and Frigento experienced severe damage, as Buccino likely did. However, this framework is complicated by the presence of a late historical source who mentions an earthquake occurred at the times of Pope Callistus II (1119-1124), the destructions of which were still visible in Buccino, in the “ horti...nella parrocchia de S Maria Sollitta... ” ����� � ������� �� �� ��������� ����� ���������� (from a drawing of B. Bardario, 1589; Biblioteca Angelica di Roma). ��� ������ �� ���� ��������� ����� ������� ��� ��� ��� �� ��� ������ The period of Pope Callistus fully matches the AMS age of the buried sheep, although it is not consistent with the time-span suggested by the pottery. Nevertheless, considering the high frequency of earthquake occurrence in this region (Galli and Peronace, 2014), we cannot exclude that more than one event hit Buccino just before and after 1000 AD, cumulating damage and collapses of the highly vulnerable Middle Age buildings. As a matter of fact, in one of the house below Amendola Square, the archaeologists unearthed a small lime furnace that was operating at the time of the collapse. The furnace overlays a thin abandonment level on the floor, suggesting that men were working inside an uninhabited house. Thus, an attractive hypothesis, that does not claim to be conclusive, is that while works were in progress for repairing the damage of the 989 earthquake, another event caused the complete collapse of the buildings around 1120 AD and the definitive burying of the ancient Decumanus . Discussion and conclusions . An unexpected and tragic event, such as the Mw 6.9 Irpinia earthquake, allowed to rediscover the buried relics of the Roman municipium of Volcei. The further amazing circumstance is that below the ruins of the last earthquake the archaeologists have found a palimpsest of constructions/ collapses/reconstructions attributable to as many