• the picenes
• the picenes in matelica
• the exhibition itinerary

• the finaguerra palace
• the visit of the museum
• the educational activities

• the city
• the province
• the region

• the city
• events and shopping
• accommodation facilities

 

The Picenes

In the Italian peninsula, from the beginning of the second half of the 10th century B.C., emerged archaeological evidences, which were different from region to region, as burial documents testifies. Experts call the aforesaid archaeological realities with names of people (Etruscans, Latins, Samnites and so on) and civilization (Etruscan, Picene and so on). Archaeologists name “Picene” the civilization, which began, during the Iron Age, in the stretch of the Adriatic coast, situated between the two rivers “Foglia” and “Pescara” and delimitated by Apennines in the west. It is a conventional name, suggested whether by written sources, which immediately after the Roman conquest referred to this territory, using the expression “ager Picenus” and the word “Picentes”, or by the fact that the majority of the archaeological finds concentrates in the area known as the Fifth Augustan Regio (Picenum). The particular geography of the Marches territory and its narrow and parallel valleys made the Picene civilization, though with its unmistakable features, varied and complex with remarkable local differentiations. The absence of a hegemonic centre capable of developing, through a common culture, a territorial and a political organization more extended, facilitated the permanence, till the end, of a tribal organization characterized by a cultural fragmentation. The knowledge of this civilization is almost exclusively based on archaeological finds largely belonging to necropolises, but we also know a large number of settlements and some religious areas. On the basis of the archaeological data acquired by the experts, the Picene civilization developed from the beginning of the Iron Age to the end of the 4th century B.C.