La ricerca archeologica nell’ager Brundisinus: lo scavo della villa di Giancola

In the ager Brundisinus, in the Giancola area, along the east bank of the canal by the same name, a few hundred metres north of the Minucia-Traiana road and about a kilometre south of the well-known kilns that produced commercial amphorae for the transport of wine and oil, structures relative to the production sector of a rural villa have been unearthed dating back to the late Republican age. The kilns and the villa seem to gravitate towards one and the same fundus, the first owner of which has been identified, thanks to the profusion of a great number of potter’s marks on the amphorae, as Visellio, a dominus presumably not of local origin. The productive activities associated with the name Visellio, although relevant to and having a strong impact on the Brindisi economy, can be restricted to a limited span of a few decades, those in the middle of the first half of the first century B.C. During the second half of the same century a slump is registered in the productive activity of the site; there is a revival of this activity with the Giancola kilns in the Augustan age and this coincides with the arrival on the scene of other personages taking over the production of amphorae, and likewise the management of the fundus, from Visellio. These personages are from a new social order, most certainly liberti; among whom we may remember Gneo Petronio Sostrato and Lucio Marci Saturnino. On the evidence of the data deduced from the analysis of the material found in the course of the archaeological research, in particular from the findings inside the lacus, we may assume that the villa continued to be lived in the first two centuries of the Roman Empire and that the productive sector ceased to function towards the end of the II and the beginning of the III century A.D. The study of the material has revealed, moreover, that the site went on being used, though it is hard to establish whether inside of the same villa, or of another structure of the late Ancient Roman period; here too it is a case of voluntarily amassed objects presented in the form of a proper rubbish dump, with pottery findings datable between the end of the IV and the beginning of the VI century A.D.