In Roman times, Larinum (today Larino) was a thriving and large settlement of ancient origin, located in the hills of the hinterland at an altitude of about 400 m, not far (about 26 km) from the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Due to its strategic location, the settlement was of considerable importance: it stretched over a large, fertile and flat area (today's Piana San Leonardo), overlooking the valley floor and the lower course of the Biferno river. It also served an important road junction, as it was located at the convergence of important road axes, which allowed profitable trade exchanges.
Larinum saw prosperity and economic development, which already reached its peak in the 3rd century BC, likely due to its geographical features, favourable climate and fertile, easy to cultivate soil. This made it a frontier town and a crossroads of cultures, between the Adriatic coast and the inland area of Samnium, always open to the influences of different cultural environments, as confirmed by the archaeological remains, which attest to the existence of a rich and populous town even before the Punic Wars.
The territory The city was located along the so-called via litoranea (also mentioned by Livy), an ancient road that from the north descended along the Adriatic to Histonium (Vasto) and then, by an inland route, after passing Larino, proceeded eastward to Sipontum (Manfredonia) and continued, again along the coast, to Brindisi; this great artery of communication was called Traiana Frentana, an appellation derived from a sepulchral inscription of a certain Marco Blavio, who was one of the curatores of the road connecting Ancona to Brindisi. Moreover, Larinum, through the Biferno valley floor, easily connected with the inland area of Pentrian Samnium, in the direction of Bovianum (Bojano), and by grafting onto the route of the Celano-Foggia sheep-track easily entered into communication with northern Daunia, in the direction of Luceria (Lucera). This dense network of routes defined, therefore, an extensive territory, a crossroads of cultures of various origins, a land of passages and settlements, but always in relationship with neighboring peoples, in a mutual relationship of cultural exchange.
The geomorphological investigations carried out in the territory of Larino have shown how this territory has proven to be propitious both for the choice of inhabited settlements and for the construction of roadways. In fact, the reserves of clay and, to a lesser extent, limestone, present locally, suitable for exploitation in the furnaces, facilitated in ancient times the construction of masonry works, together with the presence of abundant river stones, easily available due to the proximity of the Cigno and Biferno rivers.
Moreover, the territorial framework of the ancient Frentania, to which Larino belonged, represented the least impervious area of the entire Samnium, since it included the hilly strip (about 30 km. wide), easily passable, sloping toward the Adriatic Sea, consisting of arenaceous and clayey soils that were drained to the narrow, flat coastline. Encompassed between the Sangro, to the north, and the Fortore,Pliny (Naturalis Historia III, 103) gives the river the name Frento (and the variant Fertur), from which Frentani probably derives. to the south, the Frentanian region was rich in rivers from the inland Apennine areas (Sangro, Trigno, Biferno, Fortore) and minor watercourses (Foro, Osento, Sinello, Cigno, Saccione, Tona), whose valleys represented natural and easy communication routes between the coast and the interior. In addition to the main road system, the area was also served by a series of secondary routes, which constituted a dense network of communications, into which large and small settlements were inserted, able to connect with each other easily. It is assumed that the river courses themselves were used as easy routes between the coast and inland areas, since some ancient sources (Livy, Pliny), in defining portuosum flumen both the Trigno and the Fortore, suggest the existence of port activities in that stretch of the Adriatic coast.
Therefore, the morphological configuration, the abundance of water, the decidedly mild climate, the presence of a widespread forest vegetation on the hills, and the wide network of sheep-tracks, running parallel to the coast, favored the life and economy of the local populations in pre-Roman times, encouraging forms of settlement and organization of the territory. Larinum is currently an archaeological site in the province of Campobasso, Molise, Italy.
In 2016, the archaeological area had 1,566 visitors.Data collected for the year 2016 by SISTAN, the Statistics Office of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage (www.statistica.beniculturali.it). Admission is free.
History A systematic archaeological exploration of Samnium is a relatively recent initiative, as it was started in the early 1970s and gradually increased in the following decades. The earliest records of collections of prehistoric material of various Molisian provenance are available through surface surveys carried out beginning in 1876 by anthropologist Giustiniano Nicolucci and palethnologist Luigi Pigorini. The latter wrote in that very year complaining of a great poverty of information about the Stone Age in the province of Molise. It consists of eight knives from Larino, a scraper and two knives from Casacalenda and a knife from Montorio nei Frentani. Currently, the material found is partly preserved at the Luigi Pigorini National Prehistoric Ethnographic Museum in Rome and partly at the Anthropological Museum of the University of Naples Federico II.
Subsequently, it was to the credit of the British mission of the University of Sheffield and the team led by archaeologist Graeme Barker, to have conducted a capillary surface reconnaissance, started in 1974, along the wide strip of territory (Pentrian and Frentanian) that constitutes the Biferno Valley (The Biferno Valley Survey), which from the Matese massif reaches the sea, following the course of the Tifernus. Systematic land sampling has led to the identification of about one hundred and twenty ancient settlements of various sizes, covering a period from the Neolithic to the first century B.C. Barker's analysis of the results of the survey offers a picture of an intense peopling of the Frentanian territory gravitating on the lower Biferno valley, where 60 percent of the identified inhabited settlements turn out to be located. Settlement choices seem to be dictated not only by the need to exploit the sites most favorable to cultivation, but also by the intention to keep close to natural communication routes.
Through Barker's survey, the main information on the nature of early Neolithic settlements located along the Biferno valley is available, particularly of the most substantial one identified on Monte Maulo (about 350 m a.s.l.), a vast plateau below Larino, overlooking the lower Biferno valley, at the edge of a promontory about 20 km. from the sea as the crow flies. Inspection of the site, explored in 1978, led to the discovery of several species of mollusks and snails; 146 charred seeds were recovered, mainly cereals (barley and wheat) and legumes, and numerous samples of animal bones (cattle, sheep and pigs), mostly slaughtered. The excavation conducted at the top of the slope, among the plowed soil, recovered about 1,500 sherds of common pottery, mostly decorated, and about 200 pieces of chipped flint, almost all of a local stone of poor quality. Radiocarbon dates, obtained in an Oxford laboratory, date from the second half of the fifth millennium BCE. Thus, the botanical and faunal records appearing in the area confirm that early agricultural communities were present in the lower Biferno Valley as early as the late fifth millennium B.C. The site has also yielded traces of human habitation, consisting of a series of circular holes, probably dug to recover flint, filled with ceramic fragments, and structural remains of Neolithic huts (pressed clay with branch imprints). The data from Monte Maulo make it possible to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of this small part of Molise; they confirm that as early as the Early Neolithic period a mixed economy of gathering and farming was in force, with prevalence of the latter, given the variety of botanical remains found, both cereals (spelt, barley, common oats, millet, soft wheat) and legumes (broad beans, peas, lentils), as well as the numerous faunal remains, relating to animals raised, slaughtered and consumed on site.
Between 1969 and 1989, an accurate study conducted by Eugenio De Felice on the settlement of Larinum and the territory surrounding the ancient Frentanian center further enriched what is known about the early phases of occupation of this area. It has thus been possible to identify a number of Neolithic Age agricultural villages distributed throughout the territory, thanks to the numerous finds of ceramic fragments and remains of lithic industry, settlements mostly located on hilly heights and near water sources. Ceramic and bronze material, referable to the late Bronze Age - early Iron Age, has been found in various places at Montarone and Guardiola, two heights bordering to the south and north the ancient settlement of Larino, suitable for the settlement of humans and animals, well connected to both the Biferno valley floor and the coastal plain.
Although of very ancient origin, as evidenced by sporadic finds dating from the Final Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, the first significant evidence of living contexts of the city of Larino starts from the fifth century B.C.; these are mostly burial cores, often not even perfectly intact, since, due to building expansion and massive earthworks carried out for the construction of the railroad, much has been destroyed and very little remains to be explored.
Even the evidence of the Roman phase, the one best known, is currently in an extremely fragmentary state. Also of particular interest for the reconstruction of Larinum's history are the coins and epigraphic texts that have been found, references that are also useful for an understanding of the scant archaeological evidence recovered in the different areas of its urban fabric. However, these data significantly reveal continuity of life in the area as far back as protohistoric times.
From the very beginning, in 1977, the first archaeological investigation tests, initially carried out by the Soprintendenza Beni Archeologici del Molise along the southern slopes of Monte Arcano (about 2 km northwest of Piana San Leonardo), on the hills facing north, ascertained the presence of an archaic necropolis, dating back to the 6th century BCE. B.C. with rectangular burial graves, with mound covers of limestone chippings; the vessel trove almost constantly includes the large olla, bucchero, and clay pottery vessels coarsely imitating Daunian forms. Explorations conducted in other areas as well have revealed, albeit fragmentarily, the presence of a settlement stratification of ancient origin throughout the Larinum countryside, covering a rather wide time span. However, over the years it has only been possible to carry out explorations limited to the areas that remained free of construction, the entire area having by then been abundantly urbanized since the post-war period.