(ANSA) - Naples, July 5 - The arrival of the Romans in Pompeii did little damage to the flourishing community living there previously, which probably continued on its way much as before, a European team of archaeologists said on Tuesday.
The digs, which have focused on the area surrounding a pre-Roman temple, have unearthed a series of finds including pottery, bones and fruit, giving archaeologists new insight into the people living there.
"The layers dating back to the 6th century BC, have preserved evidence of a society about which very little is known," said Pompeii's superintendent Pietro Giovanni Guzzo. "The recent discoveries around the temple clarify that there was continuity between the earlier Samnite phase and the post-conquest Roman period. Although this idea has been raised before, it's the first time's it's been proved."
The discovery of the temple last year itself revolutionized archaeologists' concepts of the Samnites, showing them to be far more advanced than previously thought. Samnites had largely been considered mountain warriors, whose settlements thrived due to a military pact with Rome. But the temple, dedicated to the goddess of swamps, Mephitis, showed that the Samnite culture was more sohisticated than realized.
This season's digs have also cleared up some mysteries over how Samnites got around the town. A sharp drop between the inhabited level and the area probably used as a port had left archaeologists wondering how goods and people travelled between the two. The team now believes that the temple was built on a terrace between the two levels, supported by a hefty wall,
and acting as a kind of halfway house.
The temple, originally built in the 3rd-century BC, was apparently adopted by the Romans following their conquest of the town in 80BC but was entirely rebuilt during the Julio-Claudian era. An inscription, from which the Emperor Caligula's name
was scrubbed following his assassination, dates the work to 39AD.
But the discovery of a construction site on the same spot has convinced archaeologists that the temple was being rebuilt from scratch at the time of Vesuvius's eruption. The half-built construction, which was buried along with the rest of the town in AD79, was apparently being erected to replace the previous structure, presumably damaged in a series of earthquakes in AD62.
A large amount of votive material has been found at the temple site including lamps, terracotta shards, sea shells, coins and various kinds of bones. A series of terracotta building decorations depict a kind of hermaphrodite figure that is thought to be a depiction of Eros, the god of lust and love. Next to the temple archaeologists have found the ruins of baths which may have been used for so-called "sacred prostitution," in which betrothed maidens were given a coin before losing their virginity in the temple prior to marriage.
The Samnites were a tribe which controlled much of Italy south of Rome before the fourth century BC. They fought three wars with Rome for control of the region around Naples and later joining Rome's great Carthaginian enemy Hannibal before finally being crushed in 82BC.
