Pottery from the castle of Casertavecchia: a first analysis

The castle of Casertavecchia, a fortress located on the north-eastern edge of the current town, stands out on a crag of Mount Tifata which overlooks the Terra di Lavoro plain (Caserta) from the north. Over the last century the castle has been the subject of numerous restoration interventions, first of all an intervention in 1972 by the Civil Protection of the municipality of Caserta. During these non-archaeological operations, a significant number of artefacts linked to the life of the fortified complex were found, including iron elements such as nails and clasps, fragments of molded tuff and a significant quantity of ceramic fragments. Two bases of protomajolica bowls stand out for their conservation, a class widely attested in the Mediterranean and southern Italy. The decoration, very common in the contexts of Campania in general, is represented by a brown spiral on the bottom of the bowl. Another class of pottery present is the painted glazed one. Particularly noteworthy is a base decorated with a concentric circle motif that is very common in Campania contexts. The discovery of these two classes of ceramics, albeit not in a stratigraphic sense, allowed us to include the castle of Casertavecchia in the distribution network of these artefacts in the late medieval contexts of Campania. Together with these sporadic finds, the contribution offers a preliminary analysis of the first clay finds that emerged during the archaeological research launched in 2021 by the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, focusing on common ceramics without coating. This contribution presents itself as a first examination of the consumption of ceramics in the castle, especially with regard to the stratigraphic contexts relating to the final phases of the monument, the latter to be placed in the years between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century.