Alle origini dell’ellenismo in Magna Grecia: agricoltura, investimento e stratificazione sociale secondo le “Tavole di Eraclea” e l’archeologia del paesaggio

Abstract

The author reexamines the Heraclea tablets, two early Hellenistic bronze tablets dealing with the lease of sacred lands
at Heraclea, and tries to interpret them against the backdrop of archaeological field surveys and excavations in the area.
On the basis of ancient texts on field measurement, he argues that the land plots mentioned in the tablets were about ten times smaller than usually assumed. Therefore, only strong ‘investors’ could afford the rents. In fact, the data from a field survey carried out by the Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Archeologici di Matera since 2012 suggests that the second half of the 4th century BC was not characterized by a “democratization” of the chora, as hypothesized in the past, but by social stratification, specialization, commercial crop production and economic interdependence, as also indicated by the Heraclea tablets. As the author argues, these phenomena are closely related to developments in inland Lucania and to the origins of ‘Hellenism’ in southern Italy.