Roca (also known as Rocavecchia or Roca Vecchia) is an archaeological site located on the Adriatic coast of Apulia in Southern Italy, a few kilometres from the modern town of Melendugno and close to the city of Lecce.
The site, which has been explored since the end of the 1980s by a team of the University of Salento, has produced some of the best-preserved monumental architecture of the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC) in Southern Italy, along with the largest set of Mycenaean pottery ever recovered west of mainland Greece.
The occupation of the site continued also in the Iron Age and
Classical times, when a large natural cavity known as Poesia Cave
was used for cult practices involving the writing of thousands of
dedications to a local deity in three languages: Greek, Messapic
and Latin.
The site was re-occupied in late medieval times, when a new town
was founded by Walter VI, Count of Brienne.
Sources
- Guglielmino, R. 2006. "Roca Vecchia (Lecce): New Evidence for
Aegean Contacts with Apulia During the Late Bronze Age".
Accordia Research Papers 10: 87–102.
- Pagliara, C. 2005. "Rocavecchia (Lecce): Il sito, le
fortificazioni e l’abitato dell’età del Bronzo". In E. Greco & R.
Laffineur (eds), Emporia: Aegeans in the Central and Eastern
Mediterranean : Proceedings of the 10th International Aegean
Conference/10e Rencontre Égéenne Internationale, Athens, Italian
School of Archaeology, 14–18 April 2004. Aegaeum 25
(Liège, Belgium, and Austin, TX: Université de Liège, Histoire de
l’art archéologie de la Grèce antique ; University of Texas at
Austin, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory): 629–636.
- Pagliara, C. et al. 2007. "La sequenza cronostratigrafica delle
fasi di occupazione dell’insediamento protostorico di Roca
(Melendugno, Lecce). Relazione preliminare della campagna di scavo
2005 – Saggio X". Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche 57:
311–362.
- Pagliara, C. et al. 2008. "Roca Vecchia (Melendugno, Lecce),
SAS IX: relazione stratigrafica preliminare sui livelli di
occupazione protostorici (campagne di scavo 2005–2006)". Rivista
di Scienze Preistoriche 58: 239–280.
- Scarano, T. 2012. Roca I. Le fortificazioni della media età
del Bronzo. Foggia: Carlo Grenzi.
- Iacono, F. 2015. "Feasting at Roca: Cross-Cultural Encounters
and Society in the Southern Adriatic during the Late Bronze Age".
European Journal of Archaeology, 18 (2): 259–281.
External
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