Nuovi elementi architettonici di età arcaica dall’Athenaion di Poseidonia: una nota preliminare

The archaeological excavations conducted by the University of Salerno, in the years 2018 to 2019, in the area to the south of the temple of Athena, have uncovered a substantial cluster of architectural terracottas. These finds are part of an Archaic roof-system, only partially uncovered by earlier excavations in the 1930s. The terracottas, dated to 580-570 B.C., were initially considered to have been part of the oikos building, now only surviving in the few remaining traces of its foundations that lie to the south-east of the temple of Ceres. Recently, some scholars had argued for the revision the established architecture picture of the site. They hypothesised the existence of a proto-Athenaion temple of greater dimensions, destroyed by fire, and subsequently replaced by the late Archaic temple. The discovery of these architectural terracottas now allows us to integrate the existing documentation, on both a quantitative and a qualitative level, notwithstanding the highly fragmented nature of these finds. Firstly, the terracottas are now anchored to a precise stratigraphic sequence. Secondly, we are able better to understand the characteristics of the context, and its topographic relation with the south-east building. The discovery of new assembly marks has added to the dossier of inscriptions published by Paolo Moreno in the early 1960s. This paper, therefore, will offer a preliminary synthesis of these new architectural finds, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive reconsideration of the Athenaion roof-system.