con E. PANERO, Indices d'une activité artisanale lanière à Vercellae, Italie (original) (raw)

The Roman city of Vercellae, became a Roman municipium in 89 BC, located at a key point of the transpadanian routes, along the way that from Mediolanum and Augusta Taurinorum reached the Galliae. It provided a good amount of materials of Roman imperial time, which contributed, together with its geographical location, to better define the nature of trades and crafts. Since 2012 the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Piemonte began a systematic excavation in the area near the stadium S. Piola, that tooks place in the south - eastern suburb of the roman city, where there was also the urban amphitheater. In this area, not far from the Sesia river and the river port, emerged some roman structures of imperial age: a rustic type building, in some of its phases with an open portico, an underground environment of uncertain function built with excellent masonry technique, some channels and, more, many pits dug directly in the clay and then filled. There are many clues that suggest the area as the site for crafts activities: in addition to the mentioned structures, undoubted signs are a volcanic millstone, several large mortars and numerous loom weights of various kinds. However, it was thanks to the analysis of materials, and particularly from amphorae, which has strengthened the hypothesis of the presence of a lanarius: amphorae with coarse paste, considered for alun, and oil amphorae, should be part of the production cycle of wool and draw a strong analogy with the Altinum and Patavium area, famous in antiquity for the fine wool production, and lead us to believe our assumption is not entirely unreasonable. There are also numerous testimonies from area near Mediolanum, an area towards which Vercellae had to gravitate in the imperial age, of the existence of a textile trade route linked to the Galliae. Here will be presented in a preliminary way the excavation structures and materials that are deemed to be connected to wool crafts, waiting that further investigations add new data.