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Visit to Museum - Classical Section - Top Floor - - |
The Top Floor (Room: XXVI) is mainly dedicated to the history of Lipari from the Roman Age until beyond the Medievale Age. On display are grave goods from the second half of the III century B.C.. To the late-Roman Imperial Age, that denote, at least upto the II century B.C., the spread of a uniform pot productions, with a prevalence of pottery that is plain and not decorated, an unequivocable sign of a rather modest economic situation (Fig.39). There follows an ample illustration of the equipment that dates back to the first two centuries of the Empire, with documentation of pottery in “terra sigillata italica” (Fig.40) and in “terra sigillata africana”(Fig.41), as well as pottery rejects that testify the presence of a workshop for the production of amphorae for transportation of goods (Fig.42). To the moulded oil-lamps displaying various maufacture marks, is dedicated a specific exhibition, that allows one to visualise the chronological evolution of the Repubblican Age of the late Imperial period (Fig.43). The northern section of the room is reserved to the display of a group of epigraphs (Fig.44), Pagan and Christian, whilst one of the two display cabinets along the south wall is reserved to the display of few but significant finds from the Byzantine Age (Fig.45). The Medieval Period, along with the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, are documented by a series of materials coming mostly from the cloister of the Norman abbey an annex to the Cattedrale of S.Bartolomeo. The finds on display show the diverse commercial relationships that concerned Lipari from the beginning to the end of XI century A.D. In particular, they are representative of the markets that the wealthy purchasers from Lipari favoured, preferring to the Sicilian productions the “ceramiche graffite padane” (graffite padane pottery) and the “lustri spagnoli” (Spanish lustres). The morphological types of this pottery are characterised almost exclusively, of open forms: the cups, the bowls, the plates, the basins and they can by distinguished for their special elegance of the decoration with vegetable motifs that remind one of fern fronds or of ivy and geometrical motifs tied in various combinations (Fig.46)
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