ANCIENT FARMING IN GREEK SOUTHERN ITALY: A STUDY OF THE AGRARIAN LANDSCAPE SURROUNDING THE SANCTUARY OF SAN BIAGIO

Geoarchaeological investigations into the farming practices of Greek colonists in the Southern Italian colonial states (“Magna Graecia”) have been sparse, with those areas previously researched having been primarily located in either modern Apulia or on the island of Sicily. That said, a significant amount of archaeological research has been conducted in and around the city of Metapontum (modern Metaponto), founded c.700BCE by Achaean colonists on the coast of the Gulf of Taranto in the present-day region of Basilicata. Located approximately 8 kilometers inland from the city center in a small river valley, the Sanctuary of San Biagio is believed to date to within a few decades of the city’s founding, remaining an important religious center for the duration of Greek occupation. We hypothesize that this area was as important agriculturally as it was spiritually, aiming to identify the sequence of past cropping systems present on the valley landscape primarily via phytolith analysis. Furthermore, we aim to describe a soil chronosequence in order to better understand the processes of infill and pedogenesis active within the valley since antiquity.