Circello & the Ligurians
Red marks the mountains
called the Apuan
Alps, home of the ancient Ligurians
The small town of Circello is
at 700 meters/2100 feet in the hills of the
province of Benevento 8 km/5 mi NE of Lake Campolattaro,
not far from Naples. From tourist brochures it
seems to be a typical rural community dotted
with reminders of the Italian middle ages:
there's the almost obligatory (for southern
Italy) remnant of a Norman castle, a church from
the 11th century, an ex-monastery and a Ducal
Palace to remind us of the persistence of
medieval feudalism in southern Italy for many
centuries. There are even nice little historical
notes here and there to tell is that the name of
the town comes from cercie, the dialect
word for quercia, the oak tree. The site
has a much older history, of course, as well,
finding mention in Roman records, but even that
it is not remarkable, for the hills of Campania
once knew the presence of tribes with now remote
names: the Samnites,
Opicians, Ausoni, etc. all contemporaries of
early Rome when that Latin tribe was still
struggling towards empire (starting in around
300 BC). We know how the Roman struggle against
the Samnites and all the others turned out
—(spoiler alert!) the Romans won.
Yet there is something strange here, a mystery
perhaps never to be solved: tour books mention
of the Tower of Sant'Angelo in Circello. It was
built in 1272 and there is a stone tablet at the
base of the structure bearing the likeness of a
human figure and some text "that has never been
deciphered." Writing, itself, doesn't have that
long a history in Italy or Europe. The Greeks
brought the alphabet with them in about 600 B.C.
(see Nestor's
Cup). We can read that.
Other peoples borrowed that alphabet, such as
the Romans, the Samnites, and the Etruscans. We
can read most of that, but not the Etruscan.
True, like other peoples in Italy, they
converted the Greek alphabet to their own ends,
but we still can't read it (though we know what
sounds the letters stand for) because there is
not enough to work with, mostly repetitive tomb
inscriptions. We conclude that Etruscan is not
an Indo-European language. (Probably confirmed.)
Archaeological site in Macchia at
the site
of ancient ruins of the Liguri Berbiani
Here is
where the Ligurians come in. (Liguria is the
name for the modern Italian region of which
Genoa is the capital city, a sliver of coastal
land in the extreme northwest (on the coast
above and to the left of the marked mountain
range in the image, top right). And
hundreds of miles to the south just a few meters
below the center of Circello is a part of town
called Macchia (image, right).
Historically it was called, in Latin, Ligures
Baebiani et Corneliani; in modern Italian,
it is shortened generally to Liguri
Berbiani. That is, "Ligurians" plus the
name of the Roman consul responsible for the mass
deportation (!) of 40,000 Ligurian men,
women and children moved from their homeland in
the Apuan Alps in the north down to the hills of
Samnium onto land that the Romans had taken from
the Samnites. The Romans
called these people Liguri Apuani. "Apua"
is not from the similar sounding "Alps"
but may be from the ancient name of the city
of Pontremoli (70 km/45 miles east of Genoa).
"Apuan" today is an adjective for the
Apuan Alps and a few other things, including
the Apuan Diocese.
The episode of the deportation is
well-documented by Roman historian Livy in his
monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe condita
libri (Books from the Foundation of the
City). These Liguri apuani were deported
in the year 181 BC in an attempt to break up
what had been a constant thorn in the side of
the Romans. The Ligurian tribe (or tribes) had
sided with Hannibal in his invasion of the
peninsula in the Second Punic War, which had
just ended. That was not unusual. There were
some Italic tribes
that were not overjoyed at being gobbled up by
Rome; they fought and lost. Now Rome was taking
vengeance —disperse them, even kill them, if you
must (which is what happened to the Samnites 100
years later).
Livy says:
The consuls and senate
decided to remove them such that they had no
hope of ever returning to their homes...that
was the only way to put an end to the wars
in Liguria...40,000 men, women and children
were moved at public expense and provided
with 150,000 silver dinars to buy provisions
in their new homes.
A Latin
record of a transaction involving
the Ligurians. (From the 1st century AD,
in the National Roman Museum.
That
colony of Ligurians in Campania is known to have
existed for the remainder of the western Roman
empire and even to have thrived, no doubt
thoroughly "Romanized", by the addition of
returning war veterans as part of the Roman
process of "centurionization" (rewarding
veterans with free land). After the fall of
Rome, of course, everything went downhill
quickly. The Gothic
Wars (the final battle of which was
fought at nearby Mons Lactarius) were
ferociously destructive. Italy split into
pieces. The new kids on the block, the Arabs
(termed Saracens),
invaded the coasts and destroyed the old
Ligurian community at Macchia such that the
inhabitants fled and started other communities,
once of which was named Circello. The Dark Ages
and feudalism had arrived in the south, with no
real allegiance to central authority except to a
distant monarch, a dynastic king, whether
Norman, Swabian, French, or whatever. Circello
probably suffered no more than similar
communities, all of which were hit by various
disasters such as plague, earthquakes and war.
It may be that the small Ligurian community,
even if tightly knit at the very beginning,
simply faded away, dispersed into the general
mixed genetic background noise of history. Who
were they originally, these people who had given
the Romans so much trouble? There is really no
consensus of opinion, and there are a lot of
those. One plausible view is that they were a
very early Indo-European people that had come
into northern Italy right at the very beginning
(2500-2000 BC). Somewhat more ambitious is the
view that they were indigenous; that is,
descendants of the stone-age peoples who lived
in the area for tens of thousands of years,
people that were largely displaced or overrun by
later Indo-Europeans. They were probably not
related to the later Celts (Indo-European),
although mixed populations were bound to arise.
Greek geographer and historian, Strabo, speaks
of them as being distinct from Celts or the
Gallic tribes. They were probably spread out
beyond that little area of the northern
Apennines in modern Tuscany. How far they may
have spread into what is modern Frances is
speculative. Whether they were related to the
isolated Basques of western France (!) is really
speculative, and whether they came
from India (!) because some of the rivers in
Italy had ancient names similar to some names in
the Tamil language on the Indian
sub-continent...—well, there is no shortage of
extravagant speculation when there is a great
shortage of evidence.
Back to the little mystery at the base of the
tower of Sant'Angelo in Circello. It would help
if we could read the markings, but we can't.
Really, if you mean alphabetic markings, there
is nothing to read. There may be symbols
somewhere on it. (More below.
update
Feb 12-19, 2016 -
Population
Genetics...is a branch of molecular
biology that studies the distribution and changes
in genetic markers in populations over
time. These studies can often be
used to show relationships among widely
separated populations and trace them to
a common origin.
What follows comes
to me from Selene Salvi, research super-hero and
a fine artist.
When I suggested that I had discovered an
episode she knew nothing about (maybe I rubbed
it in by saying "HAH!")
—the deportation of the Ligurians from the
Apuan Alps to Campania,
she asked me only if I had a picture of the
mystery stone at the base of the tower. Alas,
no. Three hours (!) later I get this (it must have been the
"HAH!"):
University of
Pisa
Doctoral
Dissertation in Biological Sciences
Verifying an
historical hypothesis through Population
Genetics:
the Deportation
of the Apuan Ligurians
candidate:
Denise Diari, academic year 2013-2014
It's
130 pages long and contains the picture I was
looking for (pictured). The thesis is in
Italian but has an abstract in English. (The
complete thesis is
here.) The salient point is that
the science of genetics now confirms historical,
archaeological, and linguistic evidence that the
modern people of the Apuan Alps are related to
the modern people of the area around Circello,
near Benevento. They are demonstrably related.
The genetic markers used in these studies
persist over long periods of time, and the
Romans did not deport all the Ligurians; thus,
many stayed or escaped to the mountains, where
they holed up and continued to make military
problems for the Romans for at least another 25
years, at which time they settled down and
accepted their fate that they were now Romans.
In any event you still have a sizable gene pool
in both places to make comparisons between the
modern descendants of the Ligurians who stayed
and those who were deported to Campania. So I
guess that line in the first section (above)
about "dispersed into the general
mixed genetic background noise of history" is
baloney. (Too bad because it was such a nice
turn of phrase.)
Technically, anything like the item shown in
the image, in very broad terms, can be termed
"rock art"; that is, an engraving or painting
on a stone surface, something that is viewed
as a cultural statement, something meant to
last and be transmitted, remembered. Rock art
is a worldwide phenomenon and many famous
examples exist in Europe that go back 40,000
years, such as the ornate paintings of animals
on the walls of caves in France and Spain. The
item shown here, however, is much younger for
at least the one reason that it is not
sculpted on a stationary rock wall; it a
special kind of rock art called a stele;
that is, a portable stone slab or block,
quarried, cut to size and meant to be erected
as a monument or to serve a social purpose
(such as a boundary marker or even a
tombstone). In Europe they are typically found
south of the Valcamonica in northern Italy
quite near the area under discussion in the
case of the stele in the image. I had
misinterpreted a brochure description of the
stone: it said "human figure with an
undeciphered inscription, attributed to the
Ligurians." I don't see an inscription (unless
some part of the figure is a pictogram (a
picture that exists as part of a wider
non-alphabetic writing system), but I suspect
not.
The
stone carving is dated to the 7th
or 8th century AD (sic),* centuries
after the Ligurian deportation, yet it bears
a striking resemblance to similar objects
found in the Apuan Alps, precisely to those
steles of the last period in which they were
made, meaning after 800 BC (sic) until they
became too "Romanized" to be called Ligurian
(one sign of which might have been
ornamentation with some alphabetic writing).
Some sources accept the interpretation that
it is "Ligurian" just from the way it looks,
but which Ligurians? The original ones? Did
they bring this object with them when they
were deported, something like the Children
of Israel carrying around the Ark of the
Covenant? Even if that were possible, the
stele has been dated* to the 7th or
8th century AD, so we have to find another
possibility. One that suggests itself is
that the stele is a product of the Middle
Ages, produced by the remnant Ligurian
community as a reminder of their own past
and was then later (13th century) built into
the church tower. If that is plausible, it
explains the much older pre-Roman look.
Maybe in pre-Roman times, it would have been
a divinity or a heroic tribal
ancestor.
Around 60 such
steles have been found in northern
Italy. Stylistically, they change
over time.
Ones from this final period were all
male, which is interesting since
earlier carvings included female
figures. I'm guessing, but this may
be part of the general shift in
Europe (and elsewhere) away from
Earth Mother to Hairy Thunderer and
is another style trait for putting a
rough date on these items. Also, the
carving is finer: the rounded skull,
developed facial features, etc.
Also, stone carvings might indicate
by some symbol not evident to
non-experts (as I am not) some level
of societal complexity; that is —as
an example only— if
there is a symbol to indicate a
ruler or king, then you are dealing
with at least a chiefdom, a
relatively advanced social unit with
hereditary privilege, and not just a
band or tribe. That is just an
example, but there are many things
that can be learned about a group
from their symbols even in the
absence of writing. The Ligurians
are described in Roman literature as
being adept with weapons and highly
"magico-religious". Presumably at
least some of that can be inferred
from the rock carvings they left
behind. They might have originally
been set in a funerary or religious
display. But if the stele in place
in the tower is really from the 7th
or 8th century AD,* then it
is either a reproduction or a
fanciful original with only a
coincidental similarity to pre-Roman
carvings. Again, it is
similar to objects from the end of a
long period of
anthropomorphic rock carvings in northern
Italy going back to the fourth millennium BC.*
At least some sources (Catalano), however, put
the sculpture in the context of other similar
items from the Middle Ages found elsewhere in
the same general Samnium area of Campania and
make no mention of a purported relationship to
pre-Roman ancient Ligurian art.
*Dating
objects from the past. Dating
techniques fall into two types: relative
and absolute. The simplest form of
relative dating uses stratigraphy;
that is, examining the vertical
relationship among objects found at a
site. The assumption is that the objects
on the bottom were deposited before (and
are thus older than) the objects on top
(assuming that nothing has disturbed their
relative positions, such as floods,
earthquakes, etc.) "Seriation" or
stylistics is another form of relative
dating; it is complex but at least one
kind of seriation notes the
simple-to-complex development of rock
carvings (the case in point here); here,
the assumption is that single-line stick
figures are older than more developed
anthropomorphic forms with more fully
developed features. Note that none of this
so far gives you an absolute date.
The easiest kind of absolute
dating would be to find an artifact
of known age such as an ancient Greek coin
with a date inscribed on it (unless, of
course, it's counterfeit). (The Naples
Archaeological Museum has an entire
collection of fake ancient coins that were
really manufactured in the late 1700s.
Ironically, they now have their own
numismatic value!) The first bit of
scientific absolute dating was dendochronology,
counting tree rings. We know how old
the oldest trees are. Radiocarbon
dating was developed in the 1950s
and since that time we have been
able to determine the actual age of
carbonized wood and bone at
archaeological sites and know when
human events in the immediate area
occurred. There are now dating
methods with exotic names such as
paleomagnetic, fission-track, and
potassium-argon dating. You can date
a rock, but absent other relative or
absolute clues, not the figure
inscribed in it.
Consider the problem here. You have
a stele, a cut stone
block that has been moved,
certainly many times.
Stratigraphy is useless
since the original
surrounding physical context
is, without scientific rock
dating, no help because you
don't really care how old
the stone is, just the
figure cut into it.
Seriation
is the only
solution—essentially,
you ask
yourself, What
else have we
seen that
looks like
this? What if
there are
different
answers to
that question
that are
widely
separated in
time?
I did
say it was a mystery. The only other
explanation I can think of is that it's a hoax —medieval
masons
with a weird sense of humor.
additional sources:
-Armanini, Michele. (2015).
Ligures Apuani. Lunigiana storica,
Garfagnana e Versilia prima dei Romani,
Padova.
- Catalano, Lara. (2008). La produzione
scultorea medievale nell'abbazia San
Vincenzo al Volturno. p.30. Suor
Orsola University, Naples.
-I
Liguri. Un antico popolo tra Alpi e
Mediterraneo. (2004) -
anthology, various authors, Milano.
-Guerrieri
dell'età del Ferro in Lunigiana.
(2001) - anthology,
various authors, La Spezia.
-The Oxford
Companion to Archaeology, (1996). ed.
Brian Fagan; entries
on "Alpine Rock Art" (by C.
Chippendale); "Petroglyphs"
(by J.L. Schwauger); "Dating the Past"
by George Michaels; "Stratigraphy" by Edward
Cecil Harris. OUP, New York.
- UNESCO website
on Rock Art.