habitat rupestre.pdf - Società Friulana di Archeologia

RUPESTRIAN CULTURECRHIMA-CINP projectthe Seldjuks defeated the Byzantine Army and they began toinvade the Anatolia. 1071 was the horribilis annus of the ByzantineEmpire: in this year the Normans conquered Bari andthe provinces in Southern Italy.Few centuries before, the rupestrian villages in Puglia werealready equipped with fortified houses against the invasionsof Goths, Arabs, and Lombards. These houses had narrow andlow corridors, so that invaders would have to walk bended:this would have offered more defensive opportunities to theinhabitants of the villages.This is an exceptional solution, which was suggested by seriousdanger. In Cappadocia, for instance, Churches and Monasterieshad very monumental facades, so that they could easilybeen in sight.Many souterraines amenagès were found in France. Theseare subterranean rooms equipped for long permanence. Theirchronology is uncertain, as some of them could have beenrealized at the time of the Barbarian invasions, some othersduring the religious wars in the 16th century. The outstandingrupestrian settlements along the Valley of river Loire are stillunder examination, and this is opening new perspectives forthe research. Other French regions wait for deep study: in thesmall village of Fontvieille (Provence) there is a rupestrianBaroque church in the Orangery of a modern hotel.The current studies in Spain are focused on the Andalusiancuevas. The artificial caves at North, along the valley of theriver Ebro, between La Rioja and Cantabria, are considerederemitorios rupestres, because of the persistence of the panmonastichypothesis until 1989. The confrontation with similarrupestrian sites (in Lazio, for instance) shows that theseare civil settlements instead. The ‘Cuevas de los Portugueses’in Tartalés de Cilla, in the Province of Burgos, are a smallrupestrian village, with a dozen houses on double rows on thestream banks: the fact that they have been recently used byPortuguese immigrants is irrelevant.Some small churches may have been realized by monks orhermits (even though they could have been private chapels),but this is not the case of San Pelayo, of the church of SaintsJusto e Pastor (with two naves and two apses), in the regionof the river Pisuerga, of the church San Pedro in Argés, of thesuperior funerary church of Las Gobas in territory of Laño,with its rich inscriptions and graffiti.Recently, Italian Archaeologists are researching in Libya, andparticularly in the region of Gebel Nefusa, for a better understandingof the circum Mediterranean rupestrian settlements.Some interesting villages, churches, mosques and productiveplants, such as oil mills, are being examined.Rupestrian civilization in Southern ItalyThe historians took interest to rupestrian sites between theend of the sixties and the early seventies of the 20th century.Their main effort was avoiding the purely aesthetic conceptionof painted church of the Art historians.The documents on rupestrian villages are very rare: so theepigones developed an enchanted and epic idea about the “rupestrianlife”.Then the easy and paradoxical slogan of the “rupestrian civilization”was coined. It was both an ingenuous and a provocativeslogan, which was invented by Gianni Jacovelli (withstrictly anthropologic purposes) and diffused through the successfulbook by Fonseca in 1970.This absurd conception is still used by tourist operators, localhistorians, regional officials and Archaeological Offices,though this is hardly acceptable.But serious experts that still write about “Basilian crypts andmonks” should wonder about the characterising elements ofsuch a presumed “civilization”. Those who misuse the term“civilization” should know that it indicates specific, cultural,political and social aspects of one ore more populations.Which are the specific elements of the “medieval rupestriancivilization in Southern Italy?”Language? The inhabitants of villages spoke vulgar forms ofGreek and Latin, as in cities like Bari or Otranto.Religion? As in Rome and in Byzantium, the inhabitants of thevillages were Christians before and after the schism. What wecall “the Eastern schism” was really a “Western schism”, sincethe Church of Rome left the Calcedonian Church in 1054.Art? Where economic resources allowed for good painters,these worked in rupestrian churches, as well as in the cities.Where the economical (and maybe cultural) resources werelower, minor painters were hired, as in the suburban villages,since the great artists generally worked for wealthier patronsin the city.Town planning? Where it was studied (as we did and still do),the results showed identical uses of spaces and roads as inmountain villages, where the connections among the differentlevels of horizontal viability is granted by stairs, to overcomethe orographic difficulties.Fig. 2 Oia, Santorini.volumeRicerca_OK_2012-11-15.indd 14 16/11/2012 15:00:41