Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T06:30:47.938Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Siticulosa Apulia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

John Bradford  and
P. R. Williams-Hunt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘Parched’ Apulia still describes the dominant characteristic of this region of southern Italy as aptly as when Horace wrote. The climate is one of sharp contrasts, especially apparent on the treeless plain round Foggia (the district known as the Capitanata). There, some midwinter snow and a few intermittent days of heavy rain between January and March are offset by almost continuous, and often pitiless, days of sunshine from April to the end of September, with the thermometer reaching 105° in the shade and scorching winds from the North in late summer absorbing what little moisture remains. The average annual rainfall at Foggia is only 18-19 inches, or no more than in parts of lowland Tunisia; but the fertile soil is today intensively cultivated by dry farming, with immense open arable fields. Harvesting begins at the end of May and, as there is often little depth of cultivated soil above the absorbent subsoils, by early in July the dusty ground is baked as hard as iron.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 20 , Issue 80 , December 1946 , pp. 191 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1946

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Epodes, III, 16.

‘Nec tantus umquam siderum insedit vapor
Siticulosae Apuliae,
Nec munus humeris efficacis Herculis
Inarsit aestuosius’.

The subject of the poem is the strength of the garlic seasoning in a dish eaten at Maecenas' table.

2 See Semple, The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: its relation to Ancient History, p. 90.

3 The basis of our method was the same as that of the late Major Allen, i.e. a hand-held 8 inch focal length camera operating at 1000–1500 feet, hut of course using roll-film. A light aircraft of the Fairchild high-wing monoplane type (economical, sufficiently slow and easily manoeuvrcd) proved very suitable; particularly as there is room for an observer-map reader (in addition to the pilot and camera-man) with the special task of plotting the exact position of the sites photographed. If these are numerous hnd thc region has few distinguishing physical features in detail—as on the Tavoliere—this addition proves of the greatest value when the work of analysis later begins.

4 This included sherds of thin-walled, evenly-fired black and brown bowls and basins highly burnished on both surfaces ; smooth well-finished, buff-coloured ware painted ‘a fasce lurghe’ in red, etc.

5 It is intended to deal next with the pottery of Neolithic-Chalcolithic type, from the selected test-site , near San Sevcro ; followed by brief reports on the Roman centuriation of the Tavoliere, and on the earthworks. (J.S.P.B.)

6 As one example of this it is of interest, anthropologically, to note that during the winter of 1943—4 when the plain of Foggia was crowded with the latest stream-lined aircraft that mid-20th century science could devise, inhabitants in the main street of S. Nicandro Garganico (a few miles into the hills) fled precipitately into their houses making the Muno cornuta sign to ward off the evil eye of the fair-haired stranger, possibly a Jettatore, when I first entered the village in an open car. (J.S.P.R.)

7 eg. along the Triolo, Salsola, Vulgano, Celone, Cervaro, Carapelle, etc.

8 During 1945, when in Rome on the staff of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Subcommission of the Allied Commission for Italy, I was most fortunate in having opportunities for the general discussion of these crop-mark sites with Professor Barocelli, Director of the Museo Preistorico-Etnografico, to whom I am particularly grateful, and with Professors Fraccaro, Lugli Mancini and Patroni all of whom kindly helped me in a number of ways, as did Lt.-Col. J. B. Ward Perkins, the Director of the Sub-Commission at that time. (J.S.P.B.)

9 Compare the closely similar plan given by Dr Ridola, of the Murgecchia site (op. cit. Tav. V) at Murgia Timone, near Matera. Bulletino di Paletnologia Italiana, XLIV, 1924, Tav. VI, one of the Matera group of homesteads.

10 This was also found by Ridola. See also Rellini, Villaggi preistorici trincerati di Matera, Revista di Antropologia, XXIII, 1919.

11 op. cit., Tav. V.

12 op. cit., p. 27, fig. 3.

13 The remaining crop-marks on this plate do not concern us now. They included a square enclosure (? Roman) overlapping the further side of the ‘farmyard’ enclosure; a track junction and fragment of field system (Medieval, by analogy with others associated with earthworks); a large square enclosure in the upper right-hand corner (partly obscured by cloud-shadow) adjoining the present farm-track.; and a prominent-L-shaped crop-mark, the isolation of which a vertical photo confirms, probably connected with sheep-folding (thought to be post-Roman).

14 This great size can be appreciated by comparing the main enclosure at the Neolithic village of Küln-Lindenthal which measured c. 200 by 240 yards overall (including the ditch); see Germania vol. 19 (April 1935), plan facing p. 112.

15 Air-photographs of other sites show that sometimes the openings are closed by crop-marks resembling a palisade-trench; in other ‘hut-enclosure ditches’ there was evidently no intention of trying to close the gap with a ditch, and brush-wood or hurdles may have been partly employed.

16 The average diameter of this enclosure is from 400-600 feet overall. These dimensions can be visualized by comparing the familiar ditch-enclosed farmyard of the Early Iron Age excavated at Little Woodbury, measuring c. 460 by 400 feet overall.

17 It is worthy of note that crop-marks generically somewhat similar to our ‘hut-enclosure ditches’ were photographed from the air, by the late Major Allen, inside Dyke Hills, Dorchester, Oxon. See Oxoniensia, III, plate XVIII, or preferable Luftbid und Vorgeschichte, p. 46.

18 Among the Masai a single ‘patriarchal’ household often has its own separate kraal of some 20 to 50 huts which will move as a unit.

19 Soc. R. U. Light, Focus on Africa, American National Geographical Society’s Special Publication, no. 25 (1941). This comprises a valuable series of air-photographs taken on a flight from the Cape to Cairo; there is a copy in the library of the Royal Geographical Society.

20 The most southerly of the new Neolithic-Chalcolithic crop-mark settlements lies near the site of Cannae, across the Ofanto midway between Barletta and Canosa. ‘This site thus forms a link with the contemporary ones on the Murge. Professor Orago, Soprintendente dell’ Antichita, at Taranto, has kindly informed me that enclosures similar to those at Murgia Timone (Matera) were seen by him near Vernole, Province of Lecce (South Apulia).

21 Storia Politica d’ltalia: La Preistoria (1937) : vol. I, map facing p. 455.

22 In Italy in 1938–9 aerial-photography was being used to solve topographical problems in Roman archaeology and a report on the results obtained from the first planned flying-programme was published by Professor Lugli, who had long advocated the employment of this method of field work; see his Saggi di Esplorasione Archeologica a Mezzo DelIa Fotografia Aerea (Istito di Studi Romani).