The buildings in Spina were made of lightweight materials, especially timber, clay, and marsh grasses, according to the lagoon environment and the exploitation of natural resources. Even the most common stones, from the Apennines and the Alpine regions, was used for buildings, making weights, tools, and as gravestones.įrom the mid-4th BC, the commercial routes move to the Italian peninsula, increasing exchange with Magna Graecia and Etruria. Greek and Oriental marble was also imported, while volcanic rock were used to make millstones. Fine exotic products as wine, oil, unguents, perfumes, and spices came from the Aegean, eastern Greece, and Egypt, as evidenced by specific vases and amphorae, not to mention the glass and alabaster unguentaria.Īmber was traded from the Baltic regions for centuries and continues to adorn the local female costume. Wine, oil, and precious items from Greece, ointments and perfumes from the Near East, amber from the Baltic, and building and everyday materials from neighbouring areas.The commercial activity is demonstrated by the number and variety of imported products, with absolute precedence belonging to wine, transported in amphorae and consumed in the most precious of glassware.įor nearly two centuries, Athens supplies Padanian Etruria and the Alpine regions with wine as well as figured and black-glazed pottery. Goods came to Spina from all over the Mediterranean. This regular grid of canals generated a Greek-style layout, with standard rectangular blocks, similar to the nearby Etruscan settlements of Marzabotto and Forcello (Mantua), or in the colonies of Magna Graecia.
The main arteries consist of wide water channels, bordered by long rows of posts, and perhaps covered by bridges and walkways. Recent surveys have revealed a rational urban standard, with orthogonal axes with north-south orientation. The settlement was founded on several emerging islets, behind the sandy dunes housing the rich necropolis. Despite decades of archaeological excavations, we know only about a small part of the site.
The settlement was discovered in the early 1960s, during land reclamation works of the Valli di Comacchio. Founded around 530 BC along an ancient branch of the Po, it prospered for three centuries.Today the archaeological site is about 12 km from the sea, but in ancient times it was located at the mouth of the Delta, at the confluence of one of the Po's main branches and a dense network of secondary Apennine waterways. Spina was the most important port and Athens's main partner in the northern Adriatic.
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