Sanctuary and Community in the Chroa of Metaponto

Abstract

The following thesis investigates routes of communication and connectivity within the chora of Metaponto. Using digital methodologies within a project Geographic Information System, Least Cost Path (LCP) is used to reconstruct ancient routes between rural farmsteads and sanctuaries. LCPs are a means of presenting lines drawn over digitized terrain in order to reconstruct the easiest route of travel between two points with respect to cost factors such as slope and distance. The results of Least Cost Path are then compared against topographical anomalies identified within the landscape of the chora, many of which confirm the likelihood that these linear anomalies were used as ancient routes of travel. A survey of ancient scholarship regarding the parceling of land in both colonial and rural contexts suggests that the lines identified in the chora and supported by this LCP analysis are evidence of rural land division, urban planning, and of ancient roads from as early as the 6th century BCE. This evidence is used to suggest that independent communities formed within the Metapontine chora, using rural sanctuaries as locations for agglomeration in both cultic and secular contexts. The founding of these sanctuaries created spheres of influence within which a nucleated collection of inhabitants of the countryside formed. The boundaries of these rural communities are identifiable using a combination of Cost-Distance Allocation and a system of land division first proposed by Giovanni Uggeri in 1969. This thesis concludes that communities formed within the chora of Metaponto, exercising self-governance in local affairs related to life in the countryside. Identities within these communities were of a composite nature, at once both members of a polis and of a unique regional community centered upon their nearest extra-urban sanctuary. Residents of the chora used these sacred spaces as the symbolic capitol of their neighbourhood and the sanctuaries themselves communicated the limits of Metapontine influence and protection.