SERRA DI VAGLIO
Lucania, Italy.
In the
upper valley of the Casuentus river (Basento) near Potenza and immediately N of Vaglio della Basilicata. The
site is unrecorded in history but was occupied by an important indigenous city, the predecessor of Roman Potentia (Potenza). The city walls, of the 4th c. B.C., are best preserved on the NE side of the site. Excavation is in
progress around the temple and in the city area N of it
where a rectangular street plan was laid out at the beginning of the 6th c. B.C. over an Iron Age hut village. The city underwent a transformation in the second quarter of the 4th c. B.C. and became impoverished in the 3d
c. B.C. To the NE of the city is the site of Rossano di
Vaglio where the excavation of a monumental sanctuary
of the goddess Mefitis is under excavation.
Material from the excavations is at the Potenza Museum. It includes the building inscription in Greek of
Nummelus, ruler of the town in the 4th c. B.C. and an
extensive series of architectural terracottas (both antefixes and cover plaques).
Potentia is unknown except for sporadic finds under
the mediaeval and modern city.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. Ranaldi,
Ricerche Archeologiche
nella Provincia di Potenza 1956-1959 (1960); D. Adamesteanu in
Letteratura e Arte Figurata nella Magna
Grecia, Atti del Sesto Convegno di Studi sulla Magna
Grecia (1967) 263-65; M. Napoli,
Civiltà della Magna
Grecia (1969) 289-94; R. R. Holloway, “Archaeological
News from South Italy and Sicily,”
AJA 75 (1971) 77.
R. R. HOLLOWAY
