Aléria

Aléria (Ancient Greek: , Alaliē; Latin and Corsican: Aleria) is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica. It includes the easternmost point in Metropolitan France.

Administration

Population

Geography

The eastern coastline is punctuated by a number of lakes connecting (but not always) to the Tyrrhenian Sea, the remnant of an ancient system of lagoons behind barrier beaches. The Corsicans refer to them under the name of Étang, "pool", although most are larger by far than an English pool. Marshland is also extensive on the coast requiring that cities be built inland from it. Malaria has historically been a problem near the marshlands and swamps of eastern Corsica. The fine barrier beaches are a recreational attraction.

The Tavignano River enters the commune to the northwest and exits into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its lands include a delta, marshes to the south and the unconnected étang de Diane to the north. To the west, the étang de Terre Rosse is a lake and reservoir used to irrigate the plain.

Corsica had an indigenous population in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age but the east coast was subject to colonization by Mediterranean maritime powers: Greeks, Etruscans, Carthaginians, Romans. They typically built on an étang, which they used as a harbor. Alaliē (Ionic dialect) was placed between the southern end of the long Ētang de Diane and the Tavignanu River (ancient Rhotanos), slightly inland, but controlling the entire district including the mouth of the river. The site is partly occupied today by the village of Cateraggio (Corsican U Cateraghju) at the crossroads of national routes N200 and N198. N200 follows the Vallé du Tavignano into the interior mountains of Corte.

When the Etruscans took the district after its abandonment by the Greeks they settled further south along N198 in the vicinity of the village of Aléria, today primarily an archaeological site across the river from Cateraggio, where visitors and academics are quartered. Still south of there was the Etruscan necropolis, in today's Casabianda. Aléria takes its name from the Roman town placed there after the defeat of the Etruscans.

The entire district, however, is wider still, following the Corsican custom of including some mountains and some beaches in every district. It incorporates the agricultural lands of Teppe Rosse (to the west), the entire Étang de Diane and the Plage de Padulone east of Cateraggio, a former barrier beach. Since 1975 a series of laws have created the Casabianda-Aléria Nature Preserve, between the mouth of the Tavignanu and the Étang d'Urbinu, which is to the south.

The reserve to the south was initiated from the grounds of the former penitentiary of Casabianda in 1951. It was instituted in 1880 in a then pestilential area which it was hoped the prisoners could farm. It contained 1800 ha and 214 plots. Due to a high death rate from malaria, the agricultural experiment failed. Only in the Iron Age (700 BC-) were there any historians to distinguish between the indigenes descending from previous populations and the more recent colonists.

Although no settlements of urban density preceded the first Greek colony, Aléria is unlikely to have been altogether unpopulated. A chance find of an ancient rubbish disposal pit at a location called Terrina about from the Étang de Diane gives some information regarding pre-Roman habitation. The pit was excavated between 1975 and 1981 by G. Camps, who found four levels and named the site after the most important, Terrina IV.

Terrina IV features a Middle Neolithic settlement in which the use of cattle and pigs were, in contrast to the rest of the island, which kept mainly goats and sheep and grew grain. The Chalcolithic, approximately 3500-3000 BC, arrived by easy transition. The population of the site manufactured arsenical copper and copper goods.

The visible antique habitations at Aléria date to the Iron Age and are consistent with the common history. Although ruins on the promontory were noted by Prosper Mérimée in 1839, they were only excavated in 1955 by Jean Jehasse and Jean-Paul Boucher. By 1958 the excavators had uncovered the forum of the Roman city of Aleria, first occupied in the 1st century BC.

A pre-Roman, Etruscan necropolis was then discovered to the south (in Casabianda) containing more than 200 tombs. It was excavated between 1960-1981. The necropolis had been in use mainly from the 6th to the 3rd centuries BC and was abandoned altogether with the construction of the Roman city, which had a cemetery to the north. No artifacts that were identifiably Etruscan have been found to have been from before the 6th century BC; that is, the Etruscans were most likely intrusive at that time.

Systematic excavation since 1955 has revealed wide-ranging contacts in the sixth century, through pottery shards in test pits, with Ionian, Phocaean, Rhodian, and Attic black-figure ware. The excavated necropolis of Casabianda's rock-cut tombs have revealed treasures and goods, left or placed with the buried, that include fine works of art, jewels, weapons, metalware, bronze and ceramic plates and dishes in particular, rhytons, distinctive kraters decorated by some of the first rank Attic vase-painters.

Portable antiquities found in the Aléria commune are presented for public viewing in the Musée Jérôme Carcopino in Fort Matra in the village of Aléria.

Ancient history

Pre-Roman

Diodorus says Syracusium can only be the Étang de Diane, a lake exiting to the Tyrrhenian Sea. As Aleria and Nicaea were trade rivals it seems unlikely that the Etruscans would have allowed the Phocaeans, who were ancient Greeks, access to Étang de Diane. Nicaea is generally identified with the La Marana district further north, where the Romans later built a city, Mariana, on the Étang de Biguglia, a better harbor. while Pliny adds that Sulla much later placed two colonies, Aleria and Mariana. Evidently the Corsican Etruscans had been still cooperating with the Carthaginians. Not including them the island was divided into 32 states.

The Etruscans continued to use the necropolis. Subsequently the Etruscan population must have assimilated to a new Roman population in parallel with the assimilation of Etruscans on the mainland. The Etruscan language disappeared and it must have been starting from that time that the island began to acquire its Latin language.

Under the late Roman Republic the Romans decided to build a major naval base on the shores of Étang de Diane. Starting in 80 BC under Sulla as dictator they rebuilt the city on the promontory at Aléria, naming it Aleria. The city rose to prominence under Augustus, becoming the provincial capital of Corsica. Major fleets were stationed on the étang. Ptolemy mentions it but says little about it, only mentioning "Aleria Colonia", the Rotanus River and Diana Harbor. He lists the "native races" inhabiting the island, but their geographical coordinates do not match those of Aleria; perhaps the Roman town was not considered among them.

In the later Roman Empire the port and the city declined. It never recovered from a disastrous fire of 410 AD and in 465 was sacked by the Vandals. Subsequently it became a small village of no interest to any major power. These events must mark the end of its classical antiquity. It was buried bit by bit by the Tavignano and the Tagnone, which also created the deadly marshes. The region became subsumed under a Christian parish.

Medieval and modern history

In the 13th century AD Aleria became of interest to the Republic of Genoa. By that time the Latin language was gone but it had developed into Corsu on Corsica in parallel with the development of the other Romance languages. Aleria was the see of a bishop down to the French Revolution. At the end of the Ancien Régime, the bishop no longer lived in Aléria, but in Cervione.

The commune of Aléria was created in 1824, but it did not truly begin to revive until after 1945, after the allies (chiefly American) had undertaken to eradicate malaria (1944). An organization, SOMIVAC (Société d'aménagement pour la mise en valeur de la Corse) was created in 1957 to resurrect agriculturally the entire eastern plain under government sponsorship. It had great success in developing the region. Meanwhile a massive archaeological effort had gotten underway in 1955.

See also

References

External links

Category:Communes of Haute-Corse Category:Ancient Greek cities Category:Phocaean colonies