Il Colle delle Fate (Hill of Fairies)

The Peligna area presents a net of strengthened settlements which testifies its favorable and strategic position since ancient times. Now it seems verified that there was a development of smaller areas on the high grounds surrounding the valley in the pre-Roman age, encircling a bigger and more important area identified as the Hill of Mitra between Pettorano and Cansano.

It's possible to reach the high ground of The Hill of Fairies (724 m.) where there are still visible large remains of walls going back to a pre-Roman installation. This fortified summit, the more southern of the Morrone slope was identified, for the first time, by Antonio De Nino, a very studious researcher of the Peligna area, in the last decades of the last century. Subsequently the studies of Ezio Mattiocco and some excavation campaigns between 1955 and 1966 have furnished new data, however still partial in comparison to the extension and importance of the site.

Currently the building lines, delineating three boundaries, are easily recognizable. They were elaborated in a polygonal way and are distinguishable because of the two different ways they were placed. The superior enclosure was made of large stones intricately worked while on the long wall facing north the stones are smaller and less regular in its laying. The more external boundary has been identified primarily on the northern side of the high ground and is visible with some interruptions for approximately 350 meters. According to some researchers it dealt with a wall which permitted the realization of a terrace, datable to the IV Century B.C., with a fence situated around the acropolis.

The summit of the hill is fenced by a trapezoidal wall, built with a more regular technique in great masses of worked rocks. It deals with the real acropolis (ca. 70 x 30 meters) fortified in a later epoch in comparison to the one before, probably built around the II Century B.C. and on the inside are to be found two tanks used for the containment of rain water.

A third series of walls visible for about thirty meters has been individualized on the oriental side of the hill and in the middle between the acropolis and the terraced wall.

The excavations have made clear the techniques used for wall construction and have also taken into examination the materials used for the erection of the tanks. It deals with structures in "Tholos", that is, with rows of stones projected towards the summit. Both tanks are covered by a big stone and they have a very regular constructive system with clever expedients like the isolation of the tank coated with purified clay used for waterproofing its walls.

Inside the tanks were found above all clay waste with fragments of vases not worked at the lathe and pieces of roof tiles dating back to the Roman Age. The materials discovered were probably withdrawn in proximity of the tanks and used for filling them considering their no more functional use.

The narrow space fenced on the summit of the hill insufficient for an installation, the presence of the terraced wall and also of the two tanks have brought the researchers to hypothesize that the site was probably a sanctuary used for sacred functions. This last thesis alters totally the thesis exposed in the past by De Nino who believed the site to be a place used for the mintage of coins. Nevertheless the thesis of the sanctuary is supported and confirmed by important analyses and further discoveries to those obtained with the excavation campaign of 1965 to 1966.

The most important finding which sustains this thesis was that of the statue which represents the Mediterranean Mother Goddess in “Cicladico” style with an unusual engraved inscription in “Linear-A Cretese-Minoica” with bipenne. Also according to the researchers such a finding with these inscriptions constitutes an exceptional document not only for the past history of Peligna but also for the Italic period. It is retained to be the oldest most epigraphic document of Italy. Furthermore the researchers have conducted an intuitive job of decoding the writings obtaining results which allude to the cult of the God Baal of Astarte and Adaad, that is of the same Semitic deities Minotiche and Micenee. These hypotheses change the date of birth of the site denominated The Hill of Fairies to 1800-1700 B.C.

The discovery of the Mother Goddess in Roccacasale and the inscriptions which were deciphered set a bond with similar civilizations associated with astral mythologies such as the Sardinian one. Infact in Sardinia, in particular Sernobi, a Mother Goddess has been recovered iconographically similar to the Mother Goddess of Roccacasale. The thesis of the astral cult is enhanced by the discovery of wells found inside the perimeter of the acropolis hypothetically used as real astronomic observatories to study the phenomena of the solstices and the equinoxes in close relationship with the agrarian cults.

These civilizations have a Greek Semitic Mediterranean Matrix. In fact the temple of The Hill of Fairies of Roccacasale is similar to the most ancient monuments of Phoenician architecture and they constitute the root of the most ancient Peligna civilization.