The file attached is the published version of the article

De Bonis, A

Germinario, C

Grifa, C

Guarino, V

Langella, A

Mercurio, M

Morra, V

Petrone, CM

Soricelli, G

The ancient town of Allifae (modern Alife) represents one of the most interesting settlements
of the Northern Campania area that, together with the ancient city of Cales, was a thriving
production centre of pottery. Excavations carried out inside the city wall, near the south gate,
the so-called Porta Fiume, unearthed a huge dump of thin walled ware where the most abundant
forms were cups and beakers, decorated with grooves or rouletting. The dump has been dated
Augustan/ early Tiberian age (20 b.C.- 20 AD) and the thin walled vessels found can be
identified with similar wares from Allifae, Cubulteria, Caiatia and perhaps Neapolis. Horace in
his Sermones (II, 8,39) cited the Allifana beakers (described as fictiles ac subtiles by a Horace
scholiast) and they could possibly be identified with the thin walled wares produced in Allifae.
If this the case, then the thin walled vessels produced in Allifae were known in Rome as early as
the end of I century B.C. In order to investigate and characterise the Allifae thin-walled pottery,
twenty-one samples were selected and mineralogical-petrographic analyses (OM, XRPD,
XRF and SEM/EDS) were carried out. The clayey raw material used was a low-CaO alluvial
clayey deposit from the Middle Valley of the Volturno River. The potters probably handled the
sediment by a levigation process in order to remove the coarser grains, and making the clay
suitable to produce such thin walls. Comparison with other regional production of thin-walled
pottery allowed us to strictly distinguish the Allifana beakers

Grifa C.

Petrone C. M.

Germinario C.

Mercurio M.

Soricelli G.

Langella A.

DE BONIS, ALBERTO

GUARINO, VINCENZA

MORRA, VINCENZO

Archivio della ricerca - Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II

Thin walled pottery from Alife (Northern Campania, Italy)

The file attached is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

Natural History Museum Repository

Soricelli, Gianluca

Università degli Studi del Molise: IRIS

Thin walled pottery from Alife (Northern Campania, Italy)

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Archivio della ricerca - Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II

Natural History Museum Repository

Università degli Studi del Molise: IRIS