A SURPRISING DISCOVERY
In summer 2015, after the excavation work in the allotment Collina del Sole, the presence of archaeological material has been reported to Appignano’s police and this caused the intervention of the competent Archaeological Superintendence of Marche.
FIRST EXCAVATION AND FINDS
After the technical-scientific results, provided by use of the stratigraphic method in the preliminary investigation, the Archaeological Superintendence noticed that even if much material has been found, there was not any evidence of walls or floors, and this suggests that the finding was probably a roman landfill. Therefore, the Superintendence ordered the complete removal of the archaeological finds.
The archaeological material found consisted mostly in clay-bricks and ceramic fragments, which have been washed, photographed, and stored in three boxes in the Appignano Municipality’s warehouse.
PARTICULAR FINDS
Many finds have been recovered: amphorae’s fragments, kitchen ceramics, oil lamps, glass, painted plaster, and others. Of particular interest is a fragment of a Trachyte millstone, a mortar, a big weight for looms and a terracotta sheet with an upper band of ovolo moulding and decorated with a palm tree.
Also, worth of mention is an intact amphora’s top with a stamp in relief that displays the name DIO(n)YSO (?), written with Greek alphabet.
In the stony terracotta materials, many shingle’s fragments, handles, and radial bricks have been found; a huge amount of little rectangular bricks has also been found, some of which bound together to form a part of the floor in opus spicatum.
FROM THE FINDS TO AN INCREDIBLE HYPOTESIS
The Archaeological studies point out the fact that probably the finds were demolition material from a Roman Villa Rustica furnished with furnace, linked to the production of bricks (opus doliare).
The agricultural economy is attested by the remains of big dolii, many amphorae used to preserve and transport food, and by common kitchen ceramics (various olle) blackened by fire. The numerous rectangular bricks suggest a place of production work (pars rustica), in which they were used for herringbone flooring (opus spicatum). The hypothesis of a Villa Rustica is confirmed also by architectonic parts like shingles, roof tiles, and bricks of various shapes and dimension; but also, by decorations like many-coloured plaster’s fragments, a piece of fictile slab with a palmette, everyday objects as a trachyte millstone’s base, vases, various amphorae used to transport wine and the top of one of them with a stamp in relief, clay recipients used in the kitchen and oil lamps.
It is important to point out the fact that many of those objects – except for many-coloured plasters and fictile slab – were also used in the bare productive activity of the furnace.
A PIECE OF SHINGLE REVEALS THE ORIGIN OF APPIGNANO AND MAYBE OF ITS NAME
Among the different objects a piece of roman shingle with graffiti has been found; the fragment is 22 x 30 cm and it is quarter of a medium dimension shingle made with local clay with pink nuances, solid and well cooked. On the surface and on the fractures, there are deposits of limestone with evidences that the shingle broke in the past.
The median part of the superior face of the shingle shows an incomplete text of three lines, engraved with an irregular and slanting style, and using rural capital letters. The seems to be written by three hands, having different writing styles, and it can be read as follow:
First line: Ap(p)iu(s) C(aiae) Li(bertus) Eud? (--)
Second Line: (turn the shingle 180˚) it displays the name Kadmus, followed by three mysterious signs, maybe a Greek number.
Third line: it displays igla, standing for tigula or tegula, followed by three bigger letters CLI or CVI, which are 151 or 106.
Even if the text is incomplete and hard to read, it seems clear that the document is related to small writings used in the laboratory to register and number the pieces produced by every single artisan.
The first of those who signed the manufact is Caio Appio, a freed person of a woman from gens Appia, mostly spread in Rome and Southern Italy; the loss of the final part of the writing hides his surname, but the condition of freed man ensured him a position in the production organisation.
A second worker answered to the Grecanico name of Cadmo and he appears to having been a slave who had not properly learned the roman numeral system yet. It can be assumed that there was a third worker whose name should have been written on the lost part of the shingle.
It is very likely that the shingle has been signed to count the results of a whole working day or the load of a whole firing. In both case the written amount shows a limited number of shingles and a higher number of bricks.
The shingle fragment, besides providing useful data to understand the rural use of Appignano’s territory in the old age, could also shred a light on the origin of the modern toponym, establishing a connection with an ancient fundus Appianus, set along the diverticulum of the Flaminia way from Nuceria to Ancona, through Prolaqueum, Septempeda, Trea and Auximum.
On the hill of Appignano, our freed man used to possess or run a little atelier to produce clay bricks, mainly shingles and little bricks, thanks to the presence of a thick natural clay bench. This geological resource is in use even today in a small but appreciated local production of ceramics.
WHEN AND WHY EXACTLY THAT PLACE?
The chronology of the archaeological materials covers a long-time frame, from the middle-late Republican age to the late ancient, as proved by stratigraphical analysis.
At the end of the digging, the main question concerns the reasons that led to the gathering and dispersion of many archaeological objects belonging to a hypothetic Villa Rustica, built not far from Collina del Sole, a morphological and astronomical ideal place for an agricultural structure of the antiquity.
The most likely reason, based also on the numerous and wide diggings, could be the yellow clay vein underneath, which seems to have influenced the construction of the furnace as the most important part of a yet not identified Villa Rustica.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wants the archaeologist Professor Enzo Catani for his precious contribution.
