Dating back to the Neolithic Age, La Starza is the oldest known settlement in Campania. To the untrained eye, all that remains of the hamlet today are unrecognizable ruins in the middle of the countryside—a rocky formation overlooking a spring—but the site is, in fact, a cache of ancient pottery, earthenware, animal and plant remains, and metal artifacts. The settlement was erected nearly 9,000 years ago and was continuously inhabited for eight millennia— throughout the Neolithic Age, Iron Age, and Bronze Age—until its eventual abandonment around 900 B.C. Among the…
