Roca (archaeological site)
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.[1][2] 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.
![](../I/Grotta_della_Poesia_in_Roca_Vecchia_(Melendugno%252C_Apulia%252C_Italy).jpg.webp)
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.
References
- Edlund Berry, I., A. Small, DARMC, R. Talbert, S. Gillies, T. Elliott, J. Becker. "Places: 442746 (Rocavecchia)". Pleiades. Retrieved April 3, 2016.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
- Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Perseus Project) "ROCAVECCHIA (Melendugno) Lecce, Apuhia, Italy" (Princeton, 1976) http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0006:entry=rocavecchia