Le strade di Di Cicco

Located in the Park of Gallipoli Cognato and the Little Lucanian Dolomites, the archaeological site of Croccia Cognato rises around Monte Croccia (1140 m.s.l.) In a privileged position for the control of the Media Valle del Basento and the Salandrella river. It is in fact a fortified settlement dated between the sixth and the first half of the third century BC, which is inserted between the offshore sites of Basilicata "Lucana". The particularly mountainous and wild area, since the Mesolithic period (1200-8000 BC) starts to represent an environment of great resources. Hunter-gatherer groups chose it to direct their hunts, taking advantage of the natural cavities of sandstone rock outcrops such as shelter and cave. But this was not the reason for thefrequenting the area. The existence of these groups was not only linked to hunting activities but also to the supply of flint, raw material for the processing of their instruments, of which the territory is particularly rich. From the analysis of the lithic industry it must however have been a seasonal allocation. Among the suggestion of the natural beauty of the site, the sandstone rock outcrops, which in the Bronze Age reached their maximum monumentality with the use of the megalithic complex of Pietra della Mole as a calendar of Stone, capable of signaling the summer solstice and thewinter solstice.In the VI century BC "Croccia Cognato" comes with a city wall, "the outer city wall", built with irregular lithic stones, to which in the 4th and 4th centuries BC. is addeda new defensive circuit in pseudo-polygonal work. Both belts are built with the technique of double drywall and with the filling of the inner core composed of waste stone mixed with soil. For dating and functionality, the technique with which the first wall circuit is built is less elaborate than the second circuit, which only uses coarse solutions in the less representative points, sometimes including the rock on site. The inner city wall, better knownas "walls of the Acropolis" is defined by four non-driveway posts and by the main entrance door, whose blocks bear some signs of the Greek alphabet ascribable to the signatures of the stonemasons.What was on the Acropolis is still an open question that also conditions the reconstruction of the historical events of the site. Less doubts, however, on the articulation of the settlement between the first and second walls, where the discovery of a complex of "remarkable" dimensions excavated by Di Cicco and rediscovered by the MissionHeidelberg University could suggest that space was organized around housing facilities.It is probable that in the fourth century B.C. there is a real management of the territorial space, which results in a settlement divided into three different sectors: Acropolis, inhabited area and area of ​​worship. The latter, external to the two defensive circuits, has been identified on the basis of the ceramic finds and of the votive terracottas in the locality of "Acqua Fra Benedetto".In the first half of III a.C. we are witnessing the abandonment of the area. This is a phase of great settlement transformations for the internal Lucania.