THE ARCHEOLOGICAL NATIONAL MUSEUM

The National Archaeological Museum of Alta Val D’Agri, inaugurated on 12/16/1995, stands on the remains of the southern necropolis of Grumentum, and its garden is crossed by a section of the Roman aqueduct. Today the Museum is managed by the Polo Museale of Basilicata, a peripheral structure of the MIBACT delegated to enhance the Lucanian cultural heritage, and is organized on two levels, while work is in progress for an expansion on two further buildings. The museum, located near the archaeological area, is characterized as a museum of the territory and tells the story of the upper Val d'Agri from the Pleistocene to the early Middle Ages. A first section, dedicated to prehistory, presents the remains of elephas antiquus and other fossil remains, attested about 120,000 years ago in the territory of Grumento, then characterized by a large lake basin. Particularly representative, for the classical and Hellenistic period, the funerary objects found in the countryside of Montemurro pertinent to the period of Lucan occupation of the territory (4th century BC), which returned red-figure pottery, weapons and elements of armor, furnishings for banquets, cosmetic vases and ornaments that attest to the presence of an aristocratic elite. The votive offerings (mainly terracotta statuettes) found in a rural sanctuary of the third century BC, located on the edge of the city and dedicated to a female divinity, refer to the sphere of the sacred. The museum tour ends with the presentation of the significant materials found in the Roman city of Grumentum, founded in the third century BC. following the Roman conquest of the territory. Among the numerous finds found in the Forum, the refined marble head depicting Livia Drusilla, widow of the emperor Augustus, and an ivory ciborium with Dionysian scene; from the thermal baths come the marble statues, unfortunately headless and incomplete, depicting two nymphs, Aphrodite with dolphin and Dionysus. Of particular importance is the epigraphic section with celebratory and funerary inscriptions.

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