Satyrion, a Greek toponym preserved in the modern one of "Saturo", is a settlement located about 12 km from Taranto. The site, quoted in ancient literary sources relating to the oracles foundation of the Spartan colony of Taras, presents a multistratified human occupation, from the Neolithic through Bronze and Iron Age, with significant Mycenaean trading contacts. Inhabited by a native group of Japigi, at the end of the VIIIth century BC Saturo is involved in the process of Greek colonization and becomes one of the settlements that dot the territory of the polis of Taranto.
In continuation with the archaeological excavations carried out at the site since 2007, the Saturo project for 2017 intends to continue the activities on the Acropolis hill already funded thanks to Sapienza Grandi Scavi program. Sapienza researches 2011-2016 have contributed to enhance knowledge of Recent and Final Bronze Age Saturo, through the discovery, inter alia, of an extraordinary monumental dry-stone structure with a rectangular plan and other stretches of the massive defensive wall (so-called "ad aggere"). Bronze village life, that in its impressive structures reveals its social complexity, seems to be interrupted after Recent and Final Bronze Age. Ruins of the protohistorical settlement became the ideal focus for later occupation of Japigian and Greek Age. After a decisive break, the Iron Age settlement is replaced by the colonial occupation: the sanctuary of Athena becomes the expression of a fully greek cultural horizon.
Thanks to its strategic geographical position, looking towards the sea and the hinterland, Saturo is a key-site to test the validity of current historical and archaeological approaches on issues such as mobility, migration, circulation of goods, men, cultures and settlement organization. The field activities, and the subsequent data processing, will try to answer these questions in a diachronic perspective, analyzing Satyrion as a node of the Mediterranean networks.
