Modeling the Maritime Cultural Landscape of the Amalfi Coastline

Equally, there has been little maritime archaeological research of this coastal region.  Likely prompted by archaeological activity in the 1960s at the submerged sites at Albenga and Baiae, as well as the creation of the Centro Studi Archeologia Subacquea, maritime archaeological work appears to have begun along the Amalfi coastline in the same period.  Some of this work focused on the relatively shallow seabed between Positano, Marina di Praia, and the Li Galli islands – divers began reporting the presence of amphorae and other pottery in this area during this decade, for example, and at least 17 of the amphorae in the Minori Museum were recovered from this location in 1960.  Fourteen of the lead-anchor elements in the museum also came from this area, recovered in 1963 and 1964.

Other work, however, focused primarily on the harbour of Amalfi, searching for evidence of Amalfi sommersa.  Beginning in 1970, Plinio Amendola and Guido Picchetti, with the Centro Sub di Sorrento, investigated the harbour’s seafloor, and found pottery fragments and a large submerged feature they claimed was part of the medieval city’s walls.  Harold Edgerton and his colleagues, however, examined the same feature in 1979, and claimed it was not architectural but a natural accumulation of debris from the Canneto River mouth emptying into the bay.  Yet more recent analysis  in 2004 argues that this is a man-made feature and may be the 13th-century pier made by Cardinal Pietro Capuano.

Elsewhere along this coastline, however, maritime archaeological research appears to have been limited to two other examples.  Begun in 2004, the Archaeomar Project found two deep-water sites from the Roman and late-Roman periods near Capri, and in 2013 Paolo Pecci finished his research of a Roman-era pila or mooring-stone at Punta Fuenti.

With permission from the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paessaggio per le Province di Salerno e Avellino, our first three seasons of work between 2016 and 2018 focused on the center of the peninsula – Amalfi, the nearby coastlines, and the inhabited areas to the east and west – and was roughly divided among scholars focusing on terrestrial and underwater topics.  Luca Zavagno and Vincenzo Capriglione, for example, worked in archives and libraries in Salerno and Amalfi to synthesize sources on the changing maritime facades of Amalfi, Atrani, Minori, Maiori, and Cetara.  Carlo Donadio, Luigi Ferranti, and Corrado Stanislao, from the University of Naples Federico II, conducted geo-morphological investigations to clarify changes in the actual and relative sea level over the past millennia, and Elif Denel and Özge Demirci catalogued the collection of amphorae in the villa marittima museum in Minori recovered from the seafloor nearby.  Under water, a team of six archaeologists worked with Gaetano Milano at Centro Sub Costiera Amalfitana in Marina di Praia, to systematically survey and document archaeological material.