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Modern Description: Policastro Bussentino is a site that sits on a low hill overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea at the ‘Golfo di Policastro’. It is near the mouth of the Bussento River. Policastro Bussentino is associated with the foundation of the Greek town ‘Pyxous’ and there seem to be a number of construction phases in the circuit wall that surrounded the town that was later incorporated in to the Roman site of Buxentum. A ‘Lucanian’ section of the fortification wall can still be traced on the north‐east side of the central hill of the site on which the ruins of a medieval castle now stand. Like many sites on or near the Tyrrhenian coast Policastro Bussentino is only intervisibile with a small number of other sites, in this case two: Sante Croce and Roccagloriosa. Roccagloriosa would seem to be the more important of these connections given its size and connections with the inland. The exact nature of when and how Greek ‘Pyxous’ became Lucanian ‘Policastro Bussentino’ is not clear, either archaeologically or in literary sources. The Roman take‐over and new foundation of Roman ‘Buxentum’ only obfuscates the issue further.
Wikidata ID: Q1018282
Trismegistos Geo: 14484
DARE: 16730

Info: Myers Lucania

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

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