Urbanistic studies in the Eastern quarter of Velia - a hitherto unknown region of the town

Archaeological research in most cities of Magna Graecia focuses on the central areas of the town, including public and sacral space, while the peripheral regions are widely neglected. This also holds true for Velia, a Greek colony founded by Phocaeans on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy in the second half of the 6th c. BC. In contrast, the present project will concentrate exactly on the topic of the periphery and explore paradigmatically the area of the eastern quarter of Velia, which was selected as a sample as despite its distance from the center it constitutes an area which is decisive for the overall physiognomy of the town, its diachronic development and equally its relations with the hinterland. Main objective of project is to gain new insights into the urbanistic organization of this quarter by applying new methods, hitherto not used at Velia, like the creation of a digital elevation model by the use of a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), equipped with a high quality camera or like geophysical prospections to get an overall view of the street grid of the quarter. This exploration will be complemented by excavations at selected sites to gain better insight into the diachronic development of the area as well as to answer questions of its use and function. According to parallels in other Western Greek colonies, we might assume a preponderant use as a residential quarter, but equally a function as an artisans quarter or for other commercial activities. Further, we will take into consideration its relation to the suburbium outside the city walls where the small valley of the Fiumarella constitutes not only an important part of the agricultural hinterland of Velia, but also has brought evidence for pottery workshops. Finally the better knowledge of the eastern quarter, constituting more than half of the entire territory of Velia, will also change our ideas of the overall organization of the town and its development.

Aim of the project was to get first insights into the organization and the development of a hitherto widely unknown part of the Greek colony of Velia on the Tyrrhenian coast of Southern Italy. The exploration of the south-eastern terrace of the Eastern quarter focussed on the paradigmatic investigation of a peripheral area of the town. Our research made clear that this terrace became part of the town, founded in the late 6th c. BC, only in the course of the 3rd c. BC. Extensive geophysical prospections brought evidence for a new quarter of the town, the urbanistic organization of which determines until now the course of the roads and even the pattern of the olive trees. Four campaigns of excavations allowed us to follow the development of the area from the 3rd c. BC to the Late antique period. Of particular interest were contexts that illustrated the effects of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD on southern Campania. Although the destructions were not so dramatic like for example in Pompei they caused a complete reorganization of many areas of the town which reached its former level of living only during the early 2nd c. AD and thus some decades after the eruption. In regard to the use and functionality of the quarter we found out that it was used as a simple residential area with a high presence of workshop-areas. In the southern part of the explored zone we identified mainly kilns for the production of ceramics, while the northern part was dominated by small kilns for the working, but also the production of iron. In particular the identification of a production of iron was a great surprise as no ore deposits are known from the region of Velia. The archaeometric analyses of the slags showed that the iron ore was imported from the island of Elba, where the production of iron in the Later Republican period was complicated by the growing lack of combustibles (wood) for the smelting of iron in loco.