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Modern Description: Difesa San Biagio is located on a high ridge overlooking the Bradano Valley. It overlooks an important section on the route between Metaponto on the coast and the interior. Apart from its ‘sister’ site Cugno la Volta Difesa San Biagio is only intervisible with one other site ‐ Cozzo Presepe. However as Cozzo Presepe was the hub of large network of observation this would have been advantageous to both sites. Along with Cozzo Presepe ‐ approximately five kilometres away on the opposite side of the valley ‐ it forms an important visual control network over this stretch of the route between Metaponto on the coastline and the mountainous interior. The presence of two towers is recorded at Cugno la Volta and given the close proximity of Cugno la Volta to Difesa San Biagio (approximately 400 metres) it could be reasonable to conclude that these were built in conjunction with the defence system at Difesa San Biagio. Excavation carried out has revealed that the site was extensively occupied, primarily between the fourth and second centuries B.C. Difesa San Biagio has an almost uninterrupted viewshed from the coast line to the junction of the Bradano and the ‘Torrente Gravina di Picciano’ near modern Maratea. This stretch of nearly 35km gave great importance to the placement of the site whose visual control of the area was only intensified with the addition of the only other site it was intervisible with, Cozzo Presepe.

Info: Myers Lucania

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

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