Materials from Torre San Giovanni

The materials from Torre San Giovanni [rooms 6, 7, 11 and 12; corridor B, windows 13 and 14]
Three different exhibitions of materials are dedicated to Torre San Giovanni, which has been the port of Ugento since archaic times, from which it is located about 5 km to the south-west. The first concerns those coming from the excavation carried out in 1975-1976 by the University of Salento in collaboration with the École Française de Rome, the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, and the Free University of Brussels, near the lighthouse which stands on the sixteenth century coastal tower that gives its name to the site. The second includes 12 grave goods recovered in 2014-2016 by the Archaeological Superintendence in the necropolis brought to light just northwest of the tower itself. Also on display are some clay and stone materials found in the stretch of sea in front of Torre San Giovanni, characterised by the presence of the so-called Secche di Ugento, where various wrecks from the late republican and early imperial, as well as later period, were found.
The archaeological investigations carried out in 1975-1976 documented the occupation of the port area from the archaic to the medieval period. Rooms 6 and 7 contain a selection of ceramic and metallic materials testifying to the commercial activities that took place in the port of Ugento; to these are also added objects of everyday life, such as numerous fishing hooks. In the second half of the 4th century BC, the site of Torre San Giovanni, which had already been developed since at least the 6th-5th century BC, was fortified with the construction of a double curtain wall of stone blocks and emplekton of stones and earth, 3.50 metres wide, with a length of about 25 metres and a height of about 2.5 metres; other structures that date back to the end of the 1st century BC - early 1st century AD, are then added to this as also highlighted by new investigations carried out in the area in 2014-2016 (fig. 1).In the period between the second half of the 4th and the first half of the 3rd century BC, the numerous amphorae found testify the role played by Torre San Giovanni in the exchanges between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. In particular, the finds attest to the importation of wine g both from Greece, especially from Corfu, and from Sicily and Magna Graecia, but there is also no shortage of vessels made in the furnaces documented in the Ugento area, such as those made in the workshop of a certain Pullius, discovered near Felline, about 3 km north-west of Ugento; the latter (Dressel 2-4 wine amphorae and amphorae with ovoid "ribbon handles" similar to the those of Brindisi, probably for the production of oil) are the protagonists of rather large trade flows and are mainly documented along the Ionian coasts (in the production area and in the Gulf of Taranto) and, to a lesser extent, on the southern Adriatic coasts, on the Tyrrhenian side of the peninsula and in internal Gaul. Many of the ostraka can also be traced back to the commercial activities of the port excavations, on which the list of foodstuffs sold by merchants with names in Messapian are engraved in Greek (fig. 2).
In the Hellenistic era, there is also evidence of a sanctuary dedicated to Artemis in Torre San Giovanni, in use between the second half of the 4th and the second half of the 3rd century BC, which yielded clay statuettes of the so-called Artemis Bendis, produced in Taranto; the sacred area therefore documents the role of the site as a "free port", where exchanges between the Greeks and Messapians took place under divine protection. Then, on the obliteration layers of the sanctuary dedicated to Artemis and dating back to the second half of the 2nd and the first half of the 1st century BC, a plant for breeding or processing fish was built, in use in the second half of the 1st century BC and abandoned within the first half of the 1st century AD.
A selection of grave goods from the necropolis excavated in 2014-2016 near the coast (fig. 3), less than a hundred meters north-west of the sixteenth-century tower, is instead exhibited in rooms 11 and 12 and includes the Tomb 3 materials, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 17, 20, 22, 23 and 29. The excavations have identified15 pit tombs, 4 lithic cist tombs, 6 box tombs made of local sandstone and limestone slabs, and one with a case entirely made of tiles; these tombs contained inhumans lying on their backs on a surface obtained by levelling the outcropping rock.
The grave goods allow us to date to the second half of the 4th century BC the phase of greater use of the cemetery, certainly linked to the frequenting of the nearby settlement, with a resumption of the use of the necropolis between the 1st century BC and 1st century A.D. The oldest phase, which seems to date back to the 3rd-2nd century BC, is the one to which most of the grave goods on display belong. In this period, the funerary area, which seems to be located outside the port fortifications, could have been used by Taranto merchants who were active near Torre San Giovanni, which, as we have seen, in this phase takes the form of an emporic context, a meeting place between indigenous and Greeks. Among the grave goods of the 4th-3rd century BC., the one of the Tomb 13 stands out. It isa pit burial with a counter-pit covered by two slabs; the materials allow us to attribute it to a female individual and include a small red-figure bell krater, of clear ritual value, two single-handled cups, an achromatic oinochoe, a lekythos, a pelike, a small aryballic lekythos, an unpainted lekane and a skyphos.
However, the use of the necropolis between the late Republican age and the early Imperial age is attested by only four burials; the grave goods from three of them, Tombs 8 (tiled box), 9 (lithic box), and 11 (pit grave), are exhibited in the Museum. Tomb 8, in particular, yielded an Italic seal plate with a planta pedis stamp, attributed to the productions of Cn. Ateius Plocamus, dated after 30 AD, a round spout lamp, a rectangular bronze mirror, and a glass cup with the inscription in Greek characters ΕΥΦΡΑΙΝΟΥ ΕΦ᾽Ω ΠΑΡΕΙ (εὐφραίνου ἐφ᾽ ὧ πάρει), which can be translated as “rejoice in what you have” (fig. 4).This last vase is very peculiar and belongs to a type of glass cups with auspicious inscriptions attributed to workshops operating in the 1st century AD. in the eastern Mediterranean, probably in Sidon. In addition to these burials there is also Tomb 24, which contained the remains of a cremation, that is, an ustrinum, which, among the ash, yielded grave goods (not exhibited in the Museum) made up of three ceramic vessels - a plate in Sigillata Italica with a planta pedis stamp partially legible A. (?)N(?) (fig. 5), a grey paste cup and an achromatic lamp -, to which are added a single-handled jug in fragments and a bronze strigil. These objects confirm the importance of the port of Torre San Giovanni and its significant function even in the early imperial age, in the context of the exchanges and movements of people and products that characterised the ancient trade routes of the western Mediterranean, after a period of stasis that can be dated to the end of the 1st century BC, when the activity of the port seems to have suffered an abrupt interruption, together with the end of the production of the aforementioned local amphorae workshops.
Finally, the last part of the Museum dedicated to Torre San Giovanni includes, as already mentioned, a selection of materials dating back to the Hellenistic and Byzantine eras, exhibited in the Antiquarium (displays 13 and 14) and found along the coast of the port. These include two lithic dead bodies, a millstone and two mortaria from the imperial era, transport amphorae of various types (Greco-Italic, Lamboglia 2, Dressel 1, Dressel 2-4, Almagro 50, Africana I, Keay LII, Late Roman 1) dated between the 3rd century BC and 6th century AD, as well as spatheia from the 6th-7th century AD.