"AN ANCIENT BRONZE AGE VILLAGE (3500 B.P.) DESTROYED BY THE
PUMICE ERUPTION IN AVELLINO (NOLA -CAMPANIA)"

IL CLUB AMICI DEL VILLAGGIO PREISTORICO DI NOLA: dai una mano a Meridies e al Villaggio Preistorico di Nola. Offerte e donazioni sul c.c.p.14811806

Claude Albore Livadie, Director of Research at the CNRS (UMR 6573 Centre Camille Jullian /GDR1122 CNRS "Man and Vulcanoes Before History ") - Lecturer in Archaeometry at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples.

Even though we have known for some years now that several Ancient Bronze Age settlements belonging to the facies of Palma Campania (from the name of the site where the first significant find in the facies was located) were destroyed by an eruption of Somma and Vesuvius, we were far from imagining how important the discovery of May 2001 in the immediate vicinity of Nola would have been for the history of protohistoric architecture and our knowledge of the Ancient Bronze Age. The exceptional nature of this event and the clamour it aroused through the attention paid to it by the media are due to the spectacular state of conservation of the residential structures and the enormous quantity of data brought to light by the excavation, from the perfectly conserved marks left by cereals and animal and vegetable remains to the objects and household structures found on the site.
The village was identified during a normal building inspection in a zone of significant archaeological interest, close to the Torricelle necropolis and the amphitheatre, in an area of roughly 1500 square metres set aside for a private construction project, six metres from ground level. Three horseshoe-shaped huts were found in the eastern part of the area surveyed, separated from each other by stockades. In the remaining sector, a number of fenced areas were identified, including a threshing floor, inside which two wells were located. Some of the enclosures, one of which included a clay cage built on a framework of twigs beneath a canopy, were probably used for livestock, due to the hoof marks of domestic animals found on the ground there - cattle, sheep, goats and so on - often in combination with human footprints. The animals escaped at the moment of eruption, with the exception of nine goats, all around 4 months pregnant, shut up in the cage, and four other she-goats tied to the stockade. Other animals remained trapped too, including an adult dog in one of the huts, found hidden behind the trellis of a wall, where it had taken refuge.
The eruption
The human inhabitants also abandoned the village at the moment of the eruption, leaving anything they were unable to carry on the site. Unlike the situation that occurred in the nearby villages, in Palma Campania and San Paolo Belsito, the nature of the eruption gave the inhabitants sufficient time to make their escape, while at the same time leaving the huts in a perfect state of conservation. As the plain of Nola is at the margin of the area where pyroclastic rock fell during the first stage of the eruption, it escaped the shower of white pumice that took place during the first 5 to 6 hours of the catastrophe, suffering only the subsequent fall of grey pumice and the flowing ash deposits that covered the huts without causing them to collapse.
At the end of the eruption significant flooding took place, bringing in materials to every part of the site, not only inside the huts. As the huts are in any case located lower down in the new ground level, they attracted mud. At this point, a major event took place that led to the filling up of the huts. This lahar effectively created resistance to the inward collapse of the huts, providing a powerful counter-thrust against the pumice that had built up outside them, enabling the built structure to remain at a height of just over 1.3 metres. The mud flow slowly penetrated the structures, covering over and filling the empty vessels and furnishings, such as the oven, moving and raising up the lighter containers, restoring and consolidating the precise form inside the huts of all the materials found there, including a ladder and wooden vessels, wickerwork containers, fabrics, cords from which some vessels were hanging or which bound the structural elements together). We can clearly make out the straw faggots that covered the huts and ferns, oak leaves, mushrooms, the marks left by cereals and other vegetable remains fossilised by the mud.
The excavation and its documentation
During the excavation, a large part of the outer covering was removed to reveal the framework that supported it, with the documentation of the significant structural elements. To do this, both traditional (liquid plaster) and more modern (silicon rubber) methods were used to fill the empty spaces left by the construction material (wooden posts and beams, ties, joints and so on). The precise nature of the photographic and, more especially, graphic documentation, made it possible to trace the tiniest details of the huts.
Using the same methods, at the levels of the pumice deposits outside the huts, it was possible to identify the fencing types - beams and/or trellises, poles, stakes, boards, and so on - as well as a number of temporary structures, such as a wooden bucket hanging from a fence.
In addition to the traditional excavation survey, a high precision, three dimensional laser scanner detection technique was also used, guaranteeing a very high level of scientific accuracy. The appliance in question (Cyrax) makes use of an intermittent laser beam which produces up to 1,000 separate points for each vertical section and measures the transit time for each point at considerable distances.
The scanner picks up four types of information for each point, the x, y and z coordinates and the intensity of return, which is shown by colour and grey tone mapping. The final result of the operation is the real representation of the object in the form of a cluster of points, whose density and precision are equivalent to those of a photographic image that can be measured. The clusters of points are then recorded and processed using the most advanced graphic computer software.
The huts, furnishings and organisation of space
The residential structures (located in the NW-SE direction) have a horseshoe shape with an opening in the straight part and a protruding part over the entrance used as a canopy. The dimensions are variable, as follows: hut 4: 15.6 m in length, 4.6 m wide, 4.3/4.5 high; hut 3: 15.2 m long, 9 m wide, 5 m high; hut 2: 7.5 m long, 4.5 m wide, 4.3/4.5 m high. An inwardly opening door on the straight side near the south wall gave access to the outside. This was made up of twigs arranged horizontally, using a technique very similar to that of the trellis.
The walls are continuous up to the roof, which has a much steeper slope than that of the tiled canopies . They are built using vertical poles located at roughly 0.4 m intervals, descending to ground level, and horizontal wooden rails at a distance of 0.25 m from each other. All these elements were bound to each other with thick ropes. A number of axial poles supported the roof. Other poles were arranged laterally, all around the inner wall, and held up a vertical trellis consisting of panels of wooden twigs and/or reeds laid out lengthways, enabling the roof to disperse its weight. In this way, an air space was formed between the trellis and the true wall, used as an additional storage zone separated from the residential sector. It is not impossible that there was a mezzanine in at least one of the huts, where some of the large pottery vases found at a high level might have been stored. Inside, one or two partition walls divided the area off into two or three rooms. In the longest hut, a narrow opening linked the residential zone with the apse-shaped area used as a pantry, while a second opening connected this to an open entrance zone. In the other two huts, there was only one opening between the main zone and the smaller pantry room. This is where a number of vessels used to store food were found, while the living area was the room containing the hearth and the circular cooking plate, that had been reconstructed on several occasions.
The inhabitants had enough time to collect their most precious belongings - bronze weapons in particular - with the exception of a headdress made of plates cut out of the lower tusks of young pigs, which was suspended from the wall of the smallest hut. This must have been a typical style of head gear, manufactured locally, as other plates, still unfinished or shattered, were found in the other two huts and abandoned in the animal enclosures.
Today, archaeologists have a complete collections of the objects in use in the huts. The two larger structures contained nearly a hundred pottery vases, some of which are decorated with parallel and mesh form incisions, others with triangles etched out and filled with white paste, similar to those later found in the Apennine culture. Some vessels containing the imprint of their contents (almonds, flour, ears of barley and spelt) were also found during the excavation.
With a view to exploring the earlier phases of the settlement, the excavation was extended to the zones outside the three structures. Close to hut 4, two foetuses, aged four and a half and six months, were found buried among crushed pottery remains.
The removal of the levels beneath the original surface covered by the eruption brought to light traces of an older settlement, in the form of a few flattened, perhaps burned, huts, laid out in the same direction as the more recent structures, and a number of metal processing furnaces.

First results of the analysesThe first archaeological and botanical analyses have brought to light carbonised macro-remains and - one of the most important finds in Nola - marks in the ash left by seeds of cereals, fruit and vegetables (ferns, oak leaves, etc). Three types of cereal (monococcus, dicoccus and barley) are present, generally in the form of ears. Imprints of acorns and an almond (Amygdalus communis) have also been identified, as well as part of an olive stone. The various remains of carbonised wood from beeches, hop hornbeams and fig trees, lead to the presumption of mixed plain woodlands dominated by beech, not far from the settlement, at the margins of cultivated area with fruit trees, pasture lands and cereal crops. The analyses of the microfauna have brought to light the consistent presence of Aricola terrestris, Microtus arvali and Apodemus Cf sylvaticus. Amphibians were also found in the wells (Anura) and in one case behind the straw covering of one of the huts (bos bos). Land-living molluscs are widely present throughout the area.

A future archaeological park?
A project coordinated by the archaeological administration body is attempting to keep the structures on-site, by setting up an archaeological park. Due to the large quantity of data obtained, it has been necessary to create a team of Italian and foreign specialists, making use of important analysis laboratories.

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