|
|
Slow Tuscany
> Tuscany
> Livorno
> Popolonia and the Iron of the Etruscans
Populonia:
the iron of the Etruscans
Damiano
Andreini
|
|
|
The
month of August, in Tuscany, slowly passes through still and
sunny days. The thirsty and droughty country still maintain
its golden face with the recently cut wheat. The sky is a clear,
silent sea. In the afternoon life seems to be suspended, waiting
for the evening, when people will walk and think again. During
the hot hours of the afternoon the only alternatives are to
sleep or sunbathe, except for those who still fight working
in the weak rhythm of the hot time. Then, if one has the luck
of being in enchanting and never too much crowded beaches, like
the one in the Gulf of Baratti, I can assure you, on my own
experience, that it is really delightful to combine both things.
The Gulf of Baratti and Populonia
(one hour time by car southwards Pisa) is the northern end of
the Piombino headland, privileged sailing place for Elba Isle.
One who gets there, still before parking the car, immediately
realizes to be in a very special place: at the left of the sole
small road crossing the whole gulf there are some of the most
beautiful Etruscan
tombs of Tuscany; several sarcophagi and elegantly hut or tumulus
shaped stone buildings dot the surrounding soft country.
The tombs, which are now part of a large archeological site
(about 80 hectares divided into three different didactic routes)
saw the light in the early XX century further to a large excavation
carried out with mechanical machines by a metallurgical industry
for the iron working, as the soil there around the gulf resulted
to be very rich in iron residues. At about 10 meters dip, down
the debris, a necropolis was discovered and some years later,
on the hill westwards the gulf , also the acropolis of Populonia
(called in the Etruscan language "Fufluna", arised from Fufluns,
god of the agriculture) was discovered. Populonia was the last
town of the Etruscan "Dodecapoli" to be founded and the only
one of them to have a view over the sea.
Between the VIII and the V century b.C. Populonia had the monopoly
in the iron trade (and its by-products) all over the Mediterranean
Sea. The raw iron mainly came from Elba Isle, but it then began
to be imported when the island (which was called, not by chance,
"La Fumosa" - the smoky island - by Plinio il Vecchio) had no
more trees to be stoked in the furnaces. The iron working therefore
began in the Gulf of Baratti. Throughout the centuries the most
ancient necropolis of the place became abandoned and literally
submerged by thousands of tons of waste products, obviously
unused by the Etruscans who did not own blast furnaces.
On the right of the road, two meters lower compared to the road
level, we can find a dark red-sandy beach shining at the sun
with its iron residues; here and there some big half-burned
rocks emerge, they are probably what has left of the Etruscan
rudimentary melting furnaces. It is also known that the beach
is what remains of the millenarian erosion of the gulf coast,
since the harbor, back in its origins, extended for some other
tenths of meters further the present shore-line.
If one who has even a vague idea of the millenarian story of
Baratti places his beach towel over that evocative beach stretch
and falls asleep in the enveloping sun of August, practically
gives himself up to the time and history: it seems that indistinct
voices of the ancient forge men, of shouting mariners from the
ship bow, of peasants bowed in the fields and of women busy
with their children, our ancestors, still can be heard, mixed
to today's bathers, like playing there on the pier, two steps
from us..
The hill that on the opposite promontory closes the Gulf of
Baratti houses the small village of Populonia, already called
by the Etruscans Fufluns, 150 meters sheer to the sea. It is
there, from the non asphalted large square before the entry
walls to the castle, that the most charming sunset of the entire
Tuscan coast can be enjoyed. Or, at least, this is my convinced
opinion.
Damiano Andreini |
|
|
