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Modern Description: Monte Coppolo is a well known indigenous site located on a high mountain near the confluence if the Sarmento and Sinni rivers. It has wide ranging views over the surrounding landscape including Heraclea and the Ionian Sea. The site is well known, Lacava published detailed drawings of the Acropolis walls in 1882 and has been the subject of numerous excavations and surveys since then. The site is large at over 14 hectares and there is an upper acropolis, walled off separately from the main settlement. There is evidence of a number of gates and towers ‐ several reconstructed at the site – and extensive stretches of (mostly) reconstructed wall. Monte Coppolo is strongly connected visually with Timpone del Ponto which extends it control over the north‐east stretch of the Sinni Valley. There is the intriguing possibility that ‘Timpone del Ponto’ was also situated to control a port regulating aquatic river traffic along this lower stretch of the Sinni which Strabo explicitly mentions was navigable in Antiquity. Strabo 6.1.14. Its visual connection with Serra Maggiore to the south‐east is not strong with only a very small area of mutual intervisibility present. It is however strongly connected visually with Cersosimo. Almost the entire enclosed area of Cersosimo is visible from Monte Coppolo. Furthermore Monte Coppolo ‘guards’ extensive sections of the major access routes to Cersosimo through the Sarmento Valley. These access routes to Cersosimo are also controlled by Masseria Ruppurella (which Monte Coppolo is not intervisible with) and Cersosimo would seem to be an important focal point for all sites in this area.

Info: Myers Lucania

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

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