Stone-age colony discovered at Lake Bracciano (9,000 Year Old Canoe)

Archaeo News ^ | 22 October 2005

[nickcarraway]

In early August, underwater archaeologists excavating at Lake Bracciano, north of Rome (Italy), brought up a nine meter-long dugout canoe hewn from a massive oak trunk. Some 9,000 years old, buried under three meters of mud and eight meters of water, this was the fourth canoe excavated at a Neolithic colony discovered near the shores of Anguillara in 1989.

Unique in Neolithic archaeology, no other sites have been discovered in central Italy, and never at the bottom of a lake. It is located in La Marmotta Bay, at the foot of Anguillara's promontory. Discovered under unusual circumstances in 1989, when the Rome water authority (ACEA) began installing an aqueduct in Lake Bracciano to supplement the city's water supply. When it started using machinery to dig a trench along the lake bottom, an archaeologist was required by law to monitor proceedings. In April, he arrived at the site to find that the dredger was bringing up large pieces of wood and ordered the work to stop immediately.

Archaeologists were aware that prehistoric settlements existed at Lake Bracciano. On the opposite side, near Vicarello, archeologist Antonietta Fugazzola Delpino, director of the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome, had already discovered, in the mid-1970s, a bronze-age site from the second millennium BCE. To her excitement, along with the wood in the mud she found ceramic pottery with distinctive decorations made with cockleshells, known to archaeologists as Cardial pottery, dating from the early Neolithic period, thousands of years before the Bronze Age.

During the summer of 1989, Fugazzola and her team of divers began picking through the mud, revealing huge posts and roof timbers, a variety of utensils and ceramics. Some pottery was painted with red, black or white parallel lines, never before found in central Italy, but widely used in Greece during the early Neolithic period. The divers also found pots that were still full of plant remains, extraordinarily well preserved. Excavations have since taken place every summer. A large, rich village has been discovered, established by settlers coming to central Italy from Greece or the Near East. The settlement survived for some four centuries before it was abandoned, suddenly and mysteriously about 5,230 BCE. Supposition is that the inhabitants arrived by boat, paddling up the Arrone River (its source is at Lake Bracciano) from the Mediterranean, carrying their domesticated animals, seeds and plants. They found an ideal land rich for cultivation, forests and the clear freshwater of the lake.

The village covered more than two hectares. The 3,000 oak posts uncovered so far give an idea of the scale of the place. Rectangular dwellings were supported by the posts. Divers uncovered layers of collapsed roof timbers and walls when they reached the floors they found the remains of human life: ceramic pots containing five different kinds of wheat and barley. Some still contained the remains of stewed grain and bones from different animals. Found were a large variety of utensils: greenstone axes, wooden-handled sickles with blades of flint, and obsidian, used as knife blades and believed to have come from either the Aeolian Islands off Sicily or the island of Ponza off the coast of Lazio.

These artifacts reveal that La Marmotta wasn't an isolated outpost on the Neolithic frontier. Fugazzola believes that the people were in touch with other communities in the Mediterranean; La Marmotta may even have been a crossroads for trade. The tree rings in the house posts that the village lasted for more than 400 years have established it. By combining tree-ring chronology with carbon dates for each post, its history is fixed from around 5,690 to 5,230 BCE.

Judging by what was left behind, the village was abandoned suddenly. Whether by tidal wave, fire or whatever the reason, it transformed La Marmotta into a ghost town subsequently engulfed by Lake Bracciano and covered with preserving sediment. Since the sixth millennium BCE the water level in the Lake has risen more than eight meters. At the Pigorini Museum in Rome there is an exhibition of fascinating photographs and graphic descriptions of the underwater excavations at La Marmotta. Many of the artifacts brought to the surface are on permanent display, including the dugout canoe discovered in 1994, a votive statuette representing the earth mother, and a typical Neolithic house, with various cooking pots and utensils, is reproduced in full size.

[buffyt]

THANKS! I am moving to Rome, Italy in April or May (in So. Cal. now) I think Italy will be fun. Have only been there on vacations until now!

[FormerACLUmember]

Even the Pope spends August by one of these lakes at his summer home at Castle Gandolfo.

[leadhead]

Wow...400+ years and then..."Poof! No more town."

That's what happens when your Levee Board spends its allotments on fountains.

[Fred Nerks]

Simply add or subtract 1,000 years?

http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/001414.html
3 August 2005

8000-year-old pirogue found in lake Bracciano
An 8,000 year-old pirogue was found in Lake Bracciano, in the area of the Neolithic village La Marmotta (about 40km north of Rome, Italy). "It's an exceptional example of ancient ship engineering, which proves the advanced knowledge of the peoples who lived here in 6000 BCE" said the archaeologists who made the discovery, of the Prehistoric Museum 'Luigi Pigorini' in Rome.
More than 10m long, made out of a single oak trunk, the pirogue was still being made when it was abandoned for reasons we still don't know. It was found at a depth of 10 metres. The boat will be displayed in late September, at the town hall of Anguillara Sabazia. Research at La Marmotta is being carried out by a team led by Maria Antonietta Fugazzola, with the cooperation of Lazio's archaeology superintendence.

Source: Agenzia Giornalistica Italia (1 August 2005)

[Fred Nerks]

The three, generally oval-shaped, dark features are lakes that have formed in collapsed craters (calderas) of volcanoes. From northwest to southeast these lakes are Lake Bolsena, Lake diVico (small lake), and Lake Bracciano. The lakes are located northwest of Rome, along the east coast of central Italy. Sizeable lava flows are visible radiating outward from each of the water-filled calderas. The two large lakes drain southwest into the Tyrrhenian Sea. A narrow valley, aligned northwest to southeast provides routing access for a railroad, a highway, and the Tiber River along the eastern base of the volcanic structures. The dark feature (narrow swath) near the top of the image appears to be some type of dense vegetation, perhaps forested land, that follows the higher elevations on the east side of the Tiber River Valley. Source: Earth Sciences and Image Analysis, NASA-Johnson Space Center.

[Fred Nerks]

Page 262/263 Worlds In Collison:

'Bolsena, or the ancient Volsinium, was one of the chief cities of the Etruscans, the people whose civilization preceded that of the Latin Romans on the Apennine Peninsula. The Estruscan states occupied the area of what was later known as Tuscany, between the Tiber and the Arno.

'Near Bolsena, or Volsinium, is a lake of the same name. This lake fills a basin nine miles long, seven miles wide and 285 feet deep. For a long time this basin was regarded as the water-filled crater of a volcano. However, its area of 117 square kilometres exceeds by far that of the largest known craters on the earth - (snip)

'Hence, the idea that the lake is the crater of an extinct volcano has recently been questioned. Moreover, although the bottom of the lake is of lava, and the ground around the lake abounds with ashes and lava columns of basalt, the talus of a volcano is lacking...'

[HP8753]

Where did the extra thousand years come from?

A really old Oak tree????

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Fred Nerks, NYer, and Blam. Nice sidebars, FN.

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[Dustbunny]

Wow.... rally neat!!

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

the talus of a volcano is lacking...

meteor crater?

[Fred Nerks]

"The three, generally oval-shaped, dark features are lakes that have formed in collapsed craters (calderas) of volcanoes..."

Just look at the language. 'The three, generally oval-shaped, dark features' belies the very obvious fact that one is almost a perfect circle, but the description offered completely ignores the evidence. We are supposed to see three oval-shaped outlines.

And in the next breath 'the dark features are lakes that have formed in collapsed craters (calderas) of volcanoes'

Having persuaded us to see what we do not see, the way is clear to attempt to tell us what lies beneath. It's not just lawyers who use language in this fashion.

[N. Theknow]

Did you hear about the Indian who got off in his canoe and shot across the lake?