LÒNGOLA OF POGGIOMARINO – part 1

In the summer of the year 2000, during the construction of the Poggiomarino/Striano (Naples) wastewater treatment plant, in Lòngola di Poggiomarino scholars discovered an exceptional wetland settlement occupied since the Middle Bronze Age (XVI-XIV century BC) until the beginning of the VI century B.C.

The site of Lòngola is located in the upper valley of the Sarno river, near the current course of the same river, a little over ten kilometers east of Pompeii, in an area surrounded by the Iron Age necropolis (IX- VIII century BC) of Striano, San Marzano, San Valentino Torio and Poggiomarino. The plant was eliminated in 2004 and the Superintendency of Pompeii took possession of the entire area to carry out archaeological research. (1)

 WHY  IS THE DISCOVERY OF LÒNGOLA OF POGGIOMARINO SO INTERESTING?

It is a partial pile-dwelling settlement near the banks of the Sarno river, which brought us into one of these villages inhabited by the “Sarrastri”, people who founded Pompeii later. Those villages were made up of artificial islets, and their inhabitants created pile dwellings and moved among them trading, entering then already in contact with the Greeks. There we found indigenous ceramics, local ceramics, but already in these high chronological levels – we are in the course of the Iron Age [IX – VIII century B.C. – the period characterized by the use of iron metallurgy, especially for the manufacture of weapons and tools] – imported Greek ceramics. The “Magna Graecia” merchants went up the mouth of the Sarno river  and reached these inhabited areas along the middle and upper valley of the Sarno river. These inhabitants met  Greeks from “Magna Graecia”(See Note): Greeks from  “Pithecusae” (Ischia) (2), “Cuma” (Kyme) in the “Phlegraean Fields”, “Sibari”. In the valley of the Sarno the river people moved by “lontri”, a kind of pirogue, made from great trunks of great trees which allowed goods and people to move easily from one small island to another and from one river point to another. The Lòngola excavations took place in a humid situation which allows the preservation of  wood. In practice the presence of a water-table has favored the formation of an anaerobic environment which has allowed an optimal conservation of the organic matter in the village, in addition to a high number of both ceramic and metallic finds. Therefore Lòngola has given up a large quantity of wood (the wood of the palafittes, the floors of the huts) including two pirogues, always closed in the warehouses, in a casket coffin which is able to stabilize the hygrometric parameters (such as humidity parameters).

Numerous bone and horn objects were found, mainly of the deer family (needles, spatulas, awls, dagger handles, pins, pendants).

We have seen that since the earliest phase, the inhabitants of those villages covered the islets with thin reed walls belonging to disused huts, and to extend them, wooden boards were stuck vertically in the sand which delineated a new space in the water and then they filled it with heterogeneous material. Plant twigs and mats were then used as water insulators. But this was not enough: we have seen that, due to hydro-geological variations, it was necessary to periodically raise the floor of the houses.

NOTE:

Magna Graecia (Megalē Hellas) refers to the coastal areas of Southern Italy which were colonized by various ancient Greek city-states from the 8th to 5th centuries BC

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Caterina Cicirelli, Stato delle ricerche a Longola di Poggiomarino: quadro insediamentale e problematiche, in Pietro Giovanni Guzzo e Maria Paola Guidobaldi, Nuove Ricerche archeologiche nell’area vesuviana (scavi 2003-2006),  Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Roma 1-3 febbraio 2007, L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2008,  473
2. Pier Giovanni Guzzo “Pompei, Magna Grecia”, in  Massimo Osanna e Carlo Rescigno, “Pompei e i Greci”, Electa 2017 – p. 56

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