Necropolis

Complex: Necropolis dating back to the samnite Age. This structure occupies the northern part of the Scigliato hill and extends over an area of about 900 square metres. The present arrangement of the perimetre walls shows a unitary building plan; archaelogical data show  a complex sequence of building stages within which it is possible to identify three different settlement stages.The first stage can be referred to the Etruscan presence and can be dated back to the second half of the 6th century B.C. and the beginning of the 5th century B.C. In this period the space is occupied by a monumental complex consisting of three blocks each of them being about 25 mt long and 12 mt large.The three units are situated from west to east along the natural slope of the hill. The central block of the building was a wide "open" space, in the middle of which there was a well for the collection of aquifer water. The whole size of the building, the distribution of the internal spaces, the volume of the blocks used for building, together with other excavation data, induce us to think that it was an aristocratic late-archaic residence used for housing political and religious activities and organizing the activities involving the whole community in general. After the area was neglected, an important building intervention took place in it, which can be dated back to a period between the 5th century B.C. and the half of the 3rd century B.C. In this stage some parts of the foregoing buildings were given a new function and a new arrangement. The most evident interventions can be observed in the northern part of the area; in particular in the North-West sector, a house close to the archaic age structures can be observed. In some points signs of the destruction of the foregoing structures can be observed, while in others modification interventions, with the change of the orientation of the partition walls and the building of structures which partly integrate the pree-existing walls can be observed. The building material of the wall structures of this stage consists of calcareous pebbles of fluvial origin, distributed along different courses and dry set. The extent of the area decreased a lot over time,  starting from the half of the 3rd century B.C. In this period the destruction of a large number of partition walls is documented by the presence of many dumping used used for clearing the area from residual material. This last stage dating back a little before the foundation of the colony of Salernum, testifies, together with a house of a not big size, situated in the north-eastern part of the area, the reduced surviving settlement which was at the time mostly neglected.