Apolline Project 2007: Il Sito Romano Di Pollena Trocchia In Località Masseria De Carolis.

The 1988 discovery of a Roman building in Pollena Trocchia, which Pagano regarded as 2nd-century grain storage facility, deserves significant reconsideration. This article is a composite of several participants on the archaeological site, giving background to the Apolline Project and an update on the 2007 campaign. Each saggio or trench is described, with detailed stratigraphic interlayering of palaeosols, building collapses, anthropic context, and volcanic eruptive deposits. Each saggio has allowed for the overall reading of the site and contributes in reconstructing the entire stratigraphic sequence, from the present to the foundation of the structures. Saggi 01 and 03 study the highest, most recent layers in the site and explore the eastern side of the excavated area to date. Saggio 02 explores the last period of occupation at the site, between the AD 472 and 512 eruptions. Saggio 04 describes the architectural features of the site’s southern side, the AD 472 volcanoclastic fill and the traces of occupation after it. Saggio 05 focuses on the cultural contexts of a vaulted room, from the burial of a child (dated with a coin to AD 450-7) within it to the foundation of the walls. The preliminary study of ceramics found in the site augments knowledge of local production and trade in Late Antiquity. The pottery types are compared to Neapolitan productions, taking advantage also of the latest artifacts discovered in the neighbouring site in Somma Vesuviana. Other pottery fragments testify of a still-lively trade around the Meditarranean basin, as well as local productions imitating imported containers (e.g. African sigillata). Among the other artifacts found, are intriguing fragments of wall paintings and moulding, glassware, mosaic tesserae, and other decorative remains. The volcanoclastic sequence shows the peculiar features of the AD 472 eruption, which differs makedly from the Plinian eruption of AD 79, for the significant presence of lahars (secondary volcanoclastic debris flows). The last section offers some conclusions and interpretative hypotheses. The visible part of the site shows at least seven rooms and clear traces of a second storey; the decorative fragments collected suggest a certain richness of the site, therefore contradicting the previous interpretation of the site as complex 208 of storage rooms; the site was inhabited for a quite long period — from at least the 2nd/3rd century until the AD 472 eruption and then, in a modest structure, also after that event. This article itself, just as the remainder of the present volume, seeks to shed more light not only on a single site, but as far as it is possible upon the region where the site is found. The multidisciplinary study in progress — from the study of pottery to the analysis of archaeozoological and palaeobotanical remains — proceeds toward that broader application.