Submitted for award of PhD September 2006. - King's College London

Remains of buildings and associated pottery finds suggest that the site was certainly
inhabited during the third and second centuries BC. 154 A small excavation has
recovered enough material, mainly pottery, to show that the site of Rocca di Oratino
was occupied from the fourth to the second centuries BC. 155 Monte Pallano also
shows signs of occupation; its walls were built during the fourth and third centuries
BC and the site was inhabited well into the imperial period. ' 56 Terravecchia and
Monte Santa Croce were also inhabited, but have not yielded enough material for us
to assess when this occurred. In fact, field walking of the other fortifications found
that most of these showed some sign of habitation, such as pottery and tiles. But,
uncertainties about the dating of the polygonal walls and pottery-remains do not
allow us to establish when and for how long an individual site was inhabited, or
which sites were inhabited at a particular time. 157
Many hill-forts were either too small or their location was unfavourable, which
makes it unlikely that they were inhabited permanently or at all. Still, several
excavated sites have produced evidence for the co-existence of buildings of diverse
functions, architectural elements, and use of space, all of which are usually
'54 Marian (1901) 235. Mariani (1901) 268- The first excavations in Campo Consolino were begun by
De Nino in 1876, and the results were published in the Notizie degli Scavi (1877) 276; (1879) 320-
334; (1882) 68; (1885) 344. The finds from the territory around Aufidena formed the basis of the
collection of Museo Civico di Aufidena. L. Mariani was appointed to study the material of the
Museum and to continue the excavations in 1897. Following the excavations, a study was published in
Monumenti Antichi in 1901 and then 'Dei recenti scavi' in Aufidena in Atti del congresso
internazionale di scienze storiche, 12 vols. V. (1904) 243-53. In the second half of the 1970s the
excavations were begun again and the first publication of the material can be found in Notizie degli
scavi (1975) 409-81. Later Badoni and Giove re-published the findings as Alfedena, La Necropoli di
Campo Consolino, Chieti, 1980.1700 of the 12.600 tombs were excavated and analysed.
us Oakley (1995) 116-7.
156 Colonna (1955) 177 and (1956) 214, Pellegrino (1980) 349-65. The community living in Monte
Pallano also produced coins with the legend PALAGINU (see in Head (1913) 29).
157
Although several criteria have been used to identify sites which might have been inhabited for
longer periods, these efforts still do not yield a useful list of fortifications. One criterion is the
separation of those fortifications in which an inner circuit marked off an acropolis within the outer
circuit of the walls: Guadagno (1978 -9) 273-5 argued that it was more likely that the site was
inhabited. This method, however, does not seem to accommodate all the evidence, because
those
fortifications which have only one wall circuit were left out of the list. Another, perhaps more useful
criterion is the size of the fortification. La Regina (1975) 279. suggests that Monte Vairano (Busso),
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