The archaeological site of Satyrion, located about 12 km SE of Taras, is characterized by the extraordinary continuity of human occupation, attested almost without interruption from the Protohistoric to the Roman Age. On the so-called Acropolis, the extensive Bronze Age settlement, open to Aegean and Mycenaean trading contacts, was later replaced by a small Japigian village which, at the end of the 8 th c. B.C., was involved in the Greek colonial process and became one of the settlements dotting the chora of the polis of Taras. In continuation with the excavations carried out with great scientific results between 2007 and 2017 under the direction of prof. Enzo Lippolis and annually funded by Sapienza "Grandi Scavi" program, Satyrion project for 2019 intends to continue the activities on the Acropolis, in order to complete and extend the historical and archaeological knowledge of cultural, landscape and settlement dynamics in this crucial region of ancient Southern Italy.
The creation of a multi-disciplinary team, which brings together scholars with different skills and specializations, both internal and external to Sapienza University, has been designed to ensure an integrated and flexible approach, adapt to a complex and multistratified site as Satyrion. Particular attention will be reserved to the contributions that a more specifically topographic strategy can give to the global knowledge of the archaeological context.
So, the research about structures and material culture, settlement and environmental patterns will allow to insert the results of the annual field excavation into a wider and more international framework. Satyrion, in fact, is a key-site to test the validity of issues central for the current scientific debate such as mobility, connectivity, identities and circulation of goods, men and cultures: the research team will try to answer these questions in a diachronic perspective, analyzing Satyrion as a node of the ancient Mediterranean network.
The research activities planned for 2019 are part of a long-term project started in 2007. The Proponent, in collaboration with the members of the already well-established team, intends to continue the excavations and ongoing studies and, thanks to the undoubted potential that Satyrion can still express, integrate them with a topographical approach that makes the landscape a protagonist of the research.
Thanks to the development of the different strands of the research, it will be possible to enhance the knowledge of the site both as a local and independent entity and as part of a more complex regional settlement system, which modifies its physiognomy over the centuries.
Following the guidelines of the landscape archaeology, included in a solid theoretical and methodological framework, Satyrion offers the possibility to read spatial strategies of territorial occupation and land management.
A. In particular, by combining the paleoenvironmental, geomorphological and archaeological analyzes together, it will be possible to understand the changes occurring concurrently with some fundamental historical caesuras, the colonization and the romanization:
- the founding of the Spartan colony in 706 BC, completely changed the previous system and the relationship between the site and Taranto must still be clarified: we do not yet know the real function of Satyrion, nor its degree of autonomy with respect to the polis, but we know that there is a strong break in its history, and archaeology can help us to read this change, on other words the "before and after" the Taranto foundation.
- the other significant discontinuity can be identified in the beginning of the process of "Romanization" which, in addition to political, economic, cultural changes, requires a deep transformation in the relationship between man and the environment. The construction of the monumental ¿villa marittima¿ on the promontory nearby the Acropolis is the clearest proof of the conversion process from the sacred, public, Greek sanctuary into a profane, private, domestic space.
B. As to scientific impact, it is necessary to premise that Satyrion, despite being known since the early XXth c. and repeatedly mentioned in historical, archaeological, epigraphical literature, is not yet known as it deserves. Publications have indeed had a very discontinuous nature and preliminary character and, for the Acropolis, they came to a halt to 1964 edition by F.G. Lo Porto. The systematic publication of artifacts, structures and context, already planned and in progress, is therefore a key element for the advancement of knowledge and sharing of data in the scientific community.
C. Regarding material culture, Satyrion represents a unique opportunity to study production and circulation of goods in the Mediterranean from Bronze Age to Roman phases. The study of the mobility of objects brings with it the analysis of movement of people, ideas, social behaviors and cultures. As a result of the process of decolonization, archaeology has begun to think differently about the concept of "ethnicity", overcoming the idea of bounded societies and replacing it with a more fluid, permeable and complex perception of identities. In this perspective, it is essential to look at the Mediterranean not only as the horizon for Greek and Roman colonization, but rather as a global space of connectivity both in prehistoric and historical age.
D. One of the main resources of this research is represented by the opportunity, not so frequent in the academic world, to overcome hyperspecialisms, limited to a single chronological and cultural phase and to a single disciplinary sub-sector, by carrying out a study that is truly multi-disciplinary and "global". For example, for the Recent and Final Bronze, ceramics reveals a dynamic settlement engaged in commerce, an image that fits well with the enlargement process identified in this period in other centers of Apulia and with the hypothesized expansion of the site of Saturo-Porto Perone (M. Bettelli). For the Iron Age, Saturo matt-painted pottery was a key indicator for the pioneering article by D. Yntema (2000) to hypothesize that the permanent Greek occupation of the Acropolis was later than indicated by the sources and by Lo Porto's publication. However, the data of the new excavations invite to recalibrate this supposed phase of coexistence between Greeks and Indigenous. Furthermore, Satyrion offers the possibility of tested the new approaches offered by the most recent theoretical frameworks regarding the archeology of cult, thanks to the analysis of the two sanctuaries, each with its own specificities and functions. So, the integration of different data source (excavation, artifacts analysis, field and aerial survey, archaeobotanical studies, etc.) is the only, innovative, instrument capable of ensuring knowledge and proper management of cultural heritage and environment, achieving a tangible progress beyond the state of art.