History of Archaeological Research at Vereto

For a long time Vereto was more of a promise than an archaeological certainty. The name of the ancient town recurred in the sources, in local memory and in studies on the Messapians, but the hill remained largely unexplored. Scholarly attention long focused above all on the Centopietre and on the complex of San Giovanni Battista, monuments that fuelled different and often conflicting interpretations, while the Messapian settlement was known mainly through chance finds, scattered materials and limited investigations.

A fundamental stage in the modern history of research came with the studies of Cosimo Pagliara who, between the late 1960s and the 1970s, collected and published essential data on the inscriptions, coins, amphora stamps and epigraphic evidence connected with Veretum and the Centopietre. His work helped to place Vereto within a wider network of relations between settlement, cemeteries, roads and landing places, in particular that of San Gregorio. In those same years the volume Leuca of 1978, with the contribution of Francesco D'Andria on archaeological exploration, offered a more organic picture of the archaeology of the Capo di Leuca, setting Vereto in its historical and territorial context.

In the following years the debate was kept alive also by local scholars and enthusiasts. Among them a special role was played by Cesare Daquino, a schoolteacher from Morciano di Leuca, who in 1991 published I Messapi e Vereto. His book was not merely a summary of the available knowledge: it was also a declaration of love for a land perceived as immensely rich and fragile, marked by chance discoveries, interrupted research, clandestine looting and building development. Daquino was able to capture the renewed interest in Messapia that had matured in those years and turn it into a narrative that could speak to non-specialists too.

A methodological turning point came with the topographic research coordinated by Mariangela Sammarco, begun in the late 1990s within the collaboration between the Municipality of Patù, the University of Salento and the Soprintendenza. The archaeological map of the territory of Vereto, built through field survey, bibliographic and archival study, aerial-photo interpretation and the systematic positioning of the evidence, made it possible to read the site not as an isolated point but as a complex landscape: settlement, walls, cemeteries, roads, suburban areas and landing places. The surveys also helped to reconstruct, at least in part, the course of the ashlar circuit wall and to recognise the long duration of occupation on the hill, from protohistory to the Middle Ages.

Meanwhile, excavations, rescue work and archaeological monitoring added important pieces to the picture: the investigations at San Giovanni Battista and the Centopietre, the research in the area of Campo Re, the trial trenches along the Uschia Pagliare road, the investigations at the Madonna di Vereto, and the surveys and interventions in the area of San Gregorio. The picture remains fragmentary, but it is precisely this fragmentary nature that shows how great the potential of the site still is. As the most recent syntheses point out, archaeological research in the territory of Patù was long episodic in character; nevertheless, surface surveys, topographic documentation and the interventions of recent decades have created a solid basis for a new season of studies.

Today DiscoVereto, the first stage of Leucantica, carries this legacy into a systematic programme: excavations and investigations at Vereto and San Gregorio, the re-examination of the finds, topography, prospection and digital technologies, together with public archaeology. The aim is to bring scattered data and new evidence together in order to build an increasingly verifiable history of the site and of the Capo di Leuca.