Luceria

Toponym

The name might derive from lucus, which means "sacred grove".

It is not clear if this was the proper name of the city or if it was called Nuceria.

The little stream which separates Canossa from San Polo d'Enza is still called the Rio Luceria today. The name of this stream is fairly old as it appears in the 1364 property records of Azzo da Correggio as Rivum Luxerae.

The Egyptian astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy (85-165 AD) describes the position of the city with great precision in his Geographia, indicating the latitude and longitude according to the system he invented, but he calls it Nuceria.

However, Luceria is the best-attested and most used name, even in official documents.

History

Luceria probably arose as a mercantile centre in the 4th century BC. It was located in Gallia Cispadana, at the meeting point of three important communication routes: the old road which travelled from the river Po along the right bank of the river Enza to the south where it crossed the Apennines to Tuscia; the foothill track which connected the western zone to the east; and the mountain track which led up towards the hills where the medieval castle would later be built.

The first inhabitants of the place were the Ligurians, probably the Friniati, who developed close ties with the neighbouring Etruscans of Servirola (modern San Polo d'Enza), after some initial hostility. They took advantage of the strategic position of their settlement to trade with settlements which were further afield too.

In the 2nd century BC, the Roman Republic colonised the Po Valley and became very interested in the nodal points of the various territories for both economic and military reasons. They settled at Luceria, leading to the development of a mixed population and the transformation of what had been just an open-air market into a proper town with houses, public buildings, paved roads, sidewalks and services for travellers, like accommodation for livestock with running water and warehouses for storing goods.

The customs and traditions of the Ligurians did not disappear and the Romans did not impose their own culture. Instead, Roman culture merged with the native one slowly, probably accompanied by cross-cultural marriages. The Romanisation of Luceria dates to the Republican era, but the city actually became important later on, in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, under the Roman Empire.

At this time there were small neighbouring villages south of the rio Vico, which still exist today, such as Vico (Latin for "village"), Taverne (from the Latin Tabernae) and Carbonizzo (from carbonescere, "to collect charcoal").

Traces of a vast fire which destroyed all the wooden structures in the city date to this period. They were replaced with brick buildings on strong stone foundations. Thereafter Luceria expanded to its maximum size, occupying around 100,000 m2, bordered on the north by the Rio Luceria and to the south by the Rio Vico and crossed diagonally by a major paved street, which reaches up to 6 metres in width. …

Excavations

Archaeological research was undertaken at Luceria in a very fragmentary way from the second half of the 18th century. The long gaps between excavations led to the destruction of the built structures which were brought to light and the loss of many important artefacts which were sold or reused by the local population.

The first excavations of the site began on 21 May 1776 and were continued after a nine-year gap in 1785.

At this time Canossa belonged to the Duchy of Parma and the excavations were carried out by the abbot Angelo Schenoni, curator of the Museo di Parma.

Today archaeology is viewed as a science for reconstructing the past, but in the 18th century it was understood as a method of recovering "antiquities." Trenches measuring well over three hundred and fifty metres in length were dug with the sole object of recovering vases, statues, and various other objects for display in the museum collections, with no concern for the precious information which the excavation works were destroying.

The archives describe the discovery of foundations made up of two semicircular walls nine cubits long and two cubits thick, linked by another two straight walls. No remnants of this monumental apsidal structure have been discovered by subsequent excavations.

When the excavations ended in August 1786, the whole area was left in a mess and the structures which had not been recovered were looted.

All the mobile objects discovered in these years, including clay lamps, glass vase fragments, keys and nails made of various metals, fibulae, rings and jewelry, are now conserved in the Museo Nazionale di Antichità di Parma.

The coins deserve special discussion. Both silver and bronze of all types and denominations were found in large amounts in a good state of preservation. The dates of these coins range from the Republican period to the Late Empire, with the last coin belonging to the Emperor Valerius Valens.

In later excavations also, the discovery of large numbers of coins is reported, but these were not recorded in detail, meaning that the precious information that they could have offered about the chronology of the city has been lost. …