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Modern Description: Cersosimo is an important site located on a hill at 730 metres overlooking the modern town. It is positioned at the end of long reasonably flat stretch of the Sarmento valley, a tributary of the Sinni. Cersosimo has been extensively excavated starting with Lacava in the 1890’s and in later by de La Generie & Bianco in the 1960’s and 1980’s respectively. The site although not large ‐ just on 6 Hectares compared to neighbouring Monte Coppolo’s 14 for example ‐ but it seems to have held a number of supra‐ regional functions with a number of larger colonnaded style ‘Public Buildings’ and evidence of a possible mint. It is certainly the site with the most number of intervisible connections in the area, for example. Its status in the Lower Sinni/Sarmento Valley region maybe be emphasised by examining the prominence of its visibility within the Sarmento valley area. Running an aggregated visibility analysis within the GIS software shows that when combined, the focus of the Sarmento control network is centred around Cersosimo, with the area around the entrance to the Cersosimo along the Sarmento valley and the surrounding hills the most intensely observed area. The ‘heat map’ of observational intensity will be discussed further in the network catalogue.

Info: Myers Lucania

Brett Andrew Myers, Visual Connectivity and Control in Ancient Lucania, MPhil thesis 2018, Univ. of Sydney

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