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Modern Description: Gallicchio Vetere is a site located on a cliff on the north bank of the Middle Agri valley. It seems to hold an important position overlooking a narrow pass that controls the passage between the upper and lower Agri. After passing through this constricted area and travelling west there are a number of important sites along the extension of the Upper Agri. These include Madonna Del Vetere (Moliterno), Castelli (Tramutola), La Civita (Marsiovetere) and Marsico Nuovo. All of the sites west of Gallicchio Vetere are demonstrably in a connected visual network that extends the length of the upper Agri. However, problematically, the viewshed produced from Gallicchio Vetere does not seem to reach any of these sites. In fact it is not intervisible with any site in the area with exception of nearby Missanello, just 2km away. The inclusion of Missanello itself as a fortified centre also is problematic. It is most probably a conflation with Gallicchio Vetere. The only reference of Missanello (to the best of my knowledge) as a Lucanian fortified centre is made by De Gennaro. He gives no other information about the site other than its name and location. The only reference provided in De Gennaro’s I Circuiti Murari Della Lucania Antica is from de La Genière’s 1983 article in which she mentions Missanello in passing as part of a general reference to the proliferation of fortified centres in the uplands of Basilicata: on trouve ces fortifications un peu partout sur les hauteurs de la Basilicate (Roccanova, Cersosimo, Missanello...) It would seem ‐ as is often the practise ‐ that the ‘Missanello’ reference here refers to Gallicchio Vetere and Missanello is mentioned only as the nearest local centre to locate an otherwise little‐known site. This is certainly the case when she refers to ‘Roccanova’ in the same passage. The archaeological site itself is at ‘Marcellino’, a little over three kilometres away from Roccanova but the site is often generically referred to as ‘Roccanova’, as is the class of painted vases know from the excavations there. Given these considerations it would be in some ways it would be more prudent to exclude Missanello from the survey but it has been left in for the sake of completeness.

Info: Myers Lucania

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

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