Lastre Campana da Velia

The recent researches on Velia during the Early Imperial period are gradually highlighting new and important data related to the cultural changes that involved the city. New models, tastes and styles begun to spread specially from the Augustan age as it is well attested by some peculiar items strictly connected to the institution of the Principate. This paper focuses on two unpublished so-called Campana reliefs found in Velia during the first half of the 20th century. They belong to well-known typologies even though they present some specific features. The first relief, referable to “urban” moulds, shows a scene with treading grapes. It is characterized by a variant of the main iconographic scheme not so frequent. The second terracotta plaque attests to the activity of a probably local workshop which reviews standardized decorative schemes, replacing some items processed independently. The two reliefs from Velia provide us new data on the diffusion of these architectural terracottas in the Tyrrhenian Lucania, highlighting the receiving in a social context that, between the end of the 1st century BC and 1st century AD, had engaged in a strong recovery of his Greek cultural identity.