The fortifications of Velia

The project planned for two years focusses on the documentation and classification of the city-walls of Velia and their diachronical development. Research on the fortifications of the town has been done by the Austrian mission in the seventies and in the ninties and should be finished within this project and prepared for publication in the series of "Velia-Studien". The volume will be divided into three parts: - 1. documentation of the architecture of the fortifications; publication of the stratigraphy of the trenches made to clear the chronology and of the finds according to their context. - 2. analysis of the architecture (curtin, towers, type of gates and ports) and of the technic and material (different types of stone and bricks) used for the walls. - 3. Description of the urbanistic development of Velia following the three main-periods of the Greek town as changes in the dating of these periods will bring new insights also concerning the problem of the diateichismata. The archeological researchwork of the years 1997-99 has shown clearly the necessity to reexamine the old chronology established by Mario Napoli and others. This concerns mainly section B of the city-walls forming the diateichisma between the western and the eastern quarter of Velia in period 2. It was formerly dated to the beginning of the 5th century B. C. but by now seems to belong to the time of 400 B. C. It should be examined if the function of this diateichisma is to be seen mainly to strengthen the defensive force of the fortification or if its building was caused by social or ethnic differences of the inhabitants of the different quarters of the town. Another question is the dating of period 3 to which the famous "Porta Rosa" can be attributed. Mario Napoli has proposed a date of about 300 B. C. that makes Porta Rosa one of the earliest vaulted gates of Greek architecture. New analysis of the ceramic material seems to propose a later date within the 3rd century. It is to be expected that the project on the fortifications of Velia will bring new insights in the urbanistic development of the town especially for the period of the 4th century that until now was thought to bee a time of stagnation but that oviously has been one of the most flourishing periods of Velia.