Italian archaeological toponymy

It has occurred to me, observing the writing of some colleagues and people-on-the-internet (not naming names) that the different ways of referring to the names of archaeological sites in Italy are not always terribly clear, so here’s a little informal write-up.

A definition: a comune is an administrative unit, a municipality, that constitutes a town or city.

One thing to note right off the bat is that the names of ancient cities and settlements don’t always correspond to those of modern ones. Notable, for instance, is the fact that ancient Capua and modern Capua are in different places. In the early middle ages, the inhabitants of ancient Capua moved to the nearby city of Casilinum,(1) and when they moved they took their toponym with them, such that Casilinum became Capua. After the unification of Italy in 1861, there was a need to disambiguate homonymous comuni within what was now one state, and the city of Santa Maria Maggiore, which had grown on the site of the ancient Capua, was renamed Santa Maria Capua Vetere (“St. Mary Old Capua”) to distinguish it from both the S. Maria Maggiore in Piemonte and the new Capua.(2)

Fondo. In topographical contexts, this means “property” or “plot,” and it takes its name from the landowner. Sites that enter the archaeological literature with the name of a fondo usually fossilize that toponym even if the land changes hands afterwards. A famous example here is the important extraurban sanctuary of ancient Capua that was discovered (and devastated by uncontrolled looting) on the property of Carlo Patturelli, the Fondo Patturelli. (Today this lies within the comune of Curti.)

Frazione, literally “fraction”, “hamlet, district.” A frazione is an administrative subdivision of a comune, and usually corresponds to a village in the territory of a comune.

The ubiquitous loc. The little loc. that you often run across in the Italian archaeological literature stands for località, “locality, locale, place.” This is often a less-formal toponym, sort of like a nickname but for places. (In some regions this might be called a vocabolo or contrada, both of which can also be used to designate a rural road or series of roads.)

There can be multiple levels of località. For instance, the Lucanian sanctuary of Mefitis just east of Potenza in Basilicata goes by several modern names (we don’t know it’s ancient name with certainty), perhaps most commonly “Rossano di Vaglio.” In this case, Vaglio is the name of the comune, and Rossano is a locality within the comune. More specifically, the site can be located as “Vaglio, loc. Macchia di Rossano,” with Macchia being an even more specific locality within the broader hamlet of Rossano. The nearby settlement site within the bounds of Vaglio is called Serra: Serra di Vaglio, or Vaglio loc. Serra.

Sometimes the località might refer to the archaeological remains themselves.

One of my favorites is the site of the temple of Mercury in ancient Falerii, modern Civita Castellana, at loc. Sassi Caduti, which literally means “fallen rocks” but always makes me think “diva down!”

Nota bene there could be strange toponymical customs in the north of the country with which I’m not familiar. Proceed at your own risk!

 

1 Casilinum had been ancient Capua’s river harbor and thereby access to the sea. The ancient levels here are very deeply buried by sediment, and every once in a while I think about the possibility of finding the undisturbed port of an ancient Etruscan city down there, on the order of a Pyrgi or a Gravisca.

2 the English language Wikipedia is a mess on this issue; maybe one of these days I’ll get around to sorting it