Un progetto di ricerca tra topografia antica e archeologia dei paesaggi: l’Appia antica nel territorio di Beneventum

This work aims to present a research project on the landscapes of the ancient Appian Way in the area east of Benevento. The project, sponsored by the Soprintendenza Archeologica in collaboration with the University of Salerno, was born from the desire to deal, in an organic way, with the topographic reconstruction of the Appian roadway through a wider project of reconstruction of ancient landscapes. The Appian route, from Benevento, has been debated by various scholars who have provided several hypotheses. In particular, the road out of the city, headed east to Aeclanum. Its route to Ponte Rotto on the Calore River has not been identified yet and the studies carried out up to now are not certain of its topographical identification. What is known is that there had to be, just outside of the city, a statio, Nucriola or Nuceriola, located on the fourth mile, and the next ad Calorem, which probably was on the site of Ponte Rotto. The project Ancient Appia Landscapes wants to test the signs on the ground, the archaeological traces that these assumptions produced, trying to reconstruct not only the layout of the road, but also in a broader context, where the ancient settlement dynamics can be valued as a whole not as just an individual monument or road stretch. In this perspective, the research covers various methods and tools of investigation (the study of archives, historical maps, paleobotanical analysis, surface surveys, aerial photography interpretation, geomorphological surveys). Since 2010, a fieldwork characterised by systematic and thematic survey of particular sites started: while the surveys for particular sites allowed the retrieval of archaeological, monumental and accurate information in the area east of Benevento, the systematic surveys proposed the implementation of transects based on the geomorphological characteristics of the area. Since July 2011, a first campaign of thematic research concerning one of the assumptions of the reconstruction of the road network proposed in the early ’900 by Meomartini started. Intensive surveys provided the division of the territory in reconnaissance units measured on the morphology, on the surface visibility and on the division of land. From the first analysis of the context of findings accurate and aerial data emerged allowing to propose a topographical reconstruction of the route of the Consular way in a large and articulated settlement system