LAVELLO
Potenza, Lucania, Italy.
A center
on the right bank of the Ofanto river 12.8 km from Melfi.
It was inhabited from the beginning of the Iron Age. The
larger hill, La Gravetta, of the two small hills on which
it stood was the site in Classical and Hellenistic time of
a settlement with defensive works and an urban plan.
Traces of Early Iron Age huts and tombs are in evidence at some distance from La Gravetta, but during the
6th c. B.C., the growing necropolis spread in this direction.
Late archaic and Classical antefixes from sacred buildings have been unearthed, specifically from the area of
the modern cemetery. These are of the Tarentum-Metapontion style and resemble those of Daunia, particularly
those at Arpi. The Gorgon is the typical decorative motif,
handled in a rather sketchy fashion. Other Classical motifs represent bulls or flowers, bearing little resemblance
to Lucanian or Apulian antefixes and even less to those
of the Greek coastal colonies.
The first Greek products, the so-called Ionic cups and
bronzes, appeared in the settlement and its necropolis in
the second half of the 6th c. B.C. Daunian pottery also
appeared, as well as helmets of the Apulian-Corinthian
type and a few examples of pottery used in central
Lucania. There is only slight evidence for the use of
Greek products through the second half of the 5th c. but
it increases in the 4th c., particularly during the second
half. The tombs of this period usually exhibit a roofing
of rubble and a long dromos as at nearby Melfi and Arpi.
The center began to decline in the 3d c. B.C., the inhabitants scattering to the large farms and villages of
Gaudiano and Boreano and to the area today called
Chiesa del Diavolo.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Valente,
NSc (1949) 107; D. Adamesteanu,
Atti IV Convegno Taranto (1965) 139-40; id.,
Atti VI Convegno Taranto (1967) 259; J. de La Genière,
Recherches sur l'âge du fer en Italie Méridionale (1968)
109, 122;
Popoli anellenici (1971) 129-32.
D. ADAMESTEANU
