A medieval neighborhood is coming to light on the outskirts of Nola, in the Neapolitan area. The discovery, announced by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the metropolitan area of Napoli, May “rewriting the history of the early Middle Ages in Nola with the discovery of burials dating back to the 6th and 7th centuries”, explains a note.
The numerous ceramic fragments found testify to the frequentation of the area until the 12th-13th centuries, when a real crafts district was set up, with a limestone plant for the transformation into lime of architectural elements and sculptures composed of marble and limestone. One of these has returned the statue of a togatus of the Roman age, without the head, broken in two in the center, but recomposable.
"Nola - Explains Mariano Nuzzo, Superintendent of Fine Arts for the metropolitan area of Naples – It is a territory of great interest in Campania, together with Cuma and Capua, which covers a wide time span. The important recent discoveries, dating back to the early Middle Ages, are evidence of this. The research, currently underway, sees the Superintendency engaged in the front line in the active and timely protection of new archaeological discoveries and burials that date from the 6th to the 7th century AD”.
The territory was inhabited not only by those who were once Romans, but also by people of Germanic origin, who arrived with the so-called 'barbarian invasions', and of Greek-Eastern origin, due to the presence of the Duchy of Naples connected to the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire.
The discovery, made during preventive investigations in the construction area of a building, “could help reconstruct the history of the city founded in the 8th century BC”. “Nola – still the note – spans all the centuries of the ancient world, playing an important role in the region. To tell the most ancient centuries of its history, archaeology can count on the hundreds of vases of local production or imported from Greece, which have been coming to light from its necropolises since the eighteenth century”.
“The remains of a large amphitheater and a theater, the numerous urban and extraurban residences, some funerary mausoleums and the paved streets are the sign of the splendor of the Roman age. For the centuries following the fifth and after the devastation of the barbarians, darkness seems to have fallen on the city, to the advantage of the small agglomeration of Cimitile, which arose around the sanctuary of the Christian martyr Felix”. The Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the metropolitan area of Naples will continue the investigations until the entire area is covered.
Article published on 21 August 2023 - 12:45
