The castle of Scribla in the Val di Crati dates from 1044, when the Norman invaders of southern Italy first penetrated into northern Calabria. Four years later Count Drogo of Apulia entrusted it to his half-brother Robert Guiscard as the base for consolidating Norman rule in the region. It lay very closely to the Roman Via Popilia, the main north-south route through Calabria, at the junction of three of the main tributaries of the River Crati. However, this strategic location proved unhealthy--not surprisingly since the lower Val di Crati was marshy, and thus presumably malarial, in the Middle Ages--and Robert soon moved the caput of his new lordship to a more mountainous site, S. Marco Argentano, just over 30 km. to the SW. Scribla was temporarily deserted, but some fifteen years later repopulated with captives transferred from Sicily, presumably mainly Muslim--and a generation later some of them were still practising Muslims, although there were by then also Christians resident there. Quite where exactly these people lived is a good question. At some point thereafter a separate casale, an open village, was established in the vicinity, dedicated to St. Anthony, although this only surfaces in the (admittedly very poor) documentary record in the reign of Frederick II. By that stage too some of the territory was owned by the Hospitallers, from whom the emperor confiscated it after his abortive crusade of 1228-9. This property was eventually restored to them by Charles of Anjou after 1266. Scribla was never a very important settlement. The Angevin tax records of 1276-7 suggest that it had about 200 inhabitants. This compares with some of the more significant inhabited centres of the region: Rossano and its subsidiary villages, for example, had probably between 8000 and 9000 inhabitants at the same period, Castrovillari more than 4000, and Cosenza and S. Marco perhaps 3000. Given the terrain it can never have supported a very large population, and with suitable arable land at a premium--the flatland too marshy and the hillsides too steep--the inhabitants probably subsisted primarily on pastoral farming. The settlement was still in existence in 1424, when Ruggiero di Sanseverino, Count of Tricarico, whose vast lordship encompassed most of the region, gave it in fief to one of his vassals. However, the castle had by then been sacked and burned down, almost certainly in the early 1400s, during the troubles of the reign of King Ladislaus, and the village seems to have been deserted during the second half of the fifteenth century. The site remains deserted, and indeed its location was only recently clarified, near the railway station of Spezzano Albanese, which like so many stations in the Mezzogiorno, lies in the plain a considerable distance from the hill town, which it purports to serve.
What, however, this melancholy fate has permitted, is for the site of the castle to be excavated, by a team of archaeologists from the French School of Rome, led by Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher and Ghislaine Noyé, during the late 1970s. But, as tends to be the way with such large-scale archaeological projects, while preliminary findings were made available in conference papers even as the dig continued, it has taken many years for the examination of the artefacts and the consolidated study to be completed. And even this substantial volume is only a part, concentrating on the period from c. 1200 onwards--Noyé's equivalent study of the archaeology of the Norman period has not yet appeared.
Given the paucity of the documentation--hardly uncommon for Calabria, where earthquake as well as neglect has laid waste to almost all local archives, and what little written record we have is almost all derived from the central government at Naples-- archaeology is indispensable for understanding the site--even though the location of the attendant casale has still not been securely established. The castle was, however, perched on a steep, narrow ridge, more than 300 m. long, but at the top no more than 30 m. wide. It is probable that the early inhabitants clustered round the donjon, two towers of which remain standing. However, the excavation concentrated upon the fortress, and only trial trenches were dug in the outer parts of the ridge, and while the evidence from these suggests that there was settlement along the plateau, this is hardly conclusive. Nor indeed was the excavation of the fortress without its problems, for the site has suffered badly from erosion and subsidence since its abandonment in the fifteenth century. Thus, while traces of a curtain wall remain, much of this has disappeared, and that it did indeed run all around the site is no more than supposition. And while there would appear to have been two distinct phases of construction, the dating of these remains obscure, although the most likely period of rebuilding was during the reign of Charles I of Anjou. This second phase saw the addition of extra buildings within the castle enceinte, considerably enhancing what had hitherto been a very simple defensive structure. Fragments of harness, spurs and crossbow bolts among the archaeological detritus suggest that the castle remained garrisoned into the fourteenth century. However, notwithstanding this, the fortress of Scribla was never militarily very formidable--the construction, using local materials including stones from the river, was shoddy; the ditches cutting into the ridge on either side of the fortress were not very deep, nor the walls very high--and it would have been in no position to withstand a major siege. Where care does seem to have been taken is with the water supply, with a large underground cistern and a smaller one at surface level with the enceinte, and masonry pipes in the main tower to allow rain water to be drawn from gutters and a small cistern in the roof. The underground cistern was a late addition, being built only shortly before the destruction of the castle c. 1400/1406.
More than half of this book is devoted to an exhaustive catalogue of the finds, but here again the results often prove problematic. The metalwork is fragmentary, and heavily corroded, the coin finds scanty and disappointing, and dating most of what has been found is uncertain. (The absence of secure stratigraphy for most of the site is notable). There are quite a number of glass beads from (probably) the fourteenth century, but it is hard to know what significance this may have. These sections will be of interest to specialist archaeologists, but have little for the historian trying to put the site into context. The most illuminating chapter about the finds is that on the pottery, where much of the glazed/painted ware seems to have been imported from Apulia--some from the Capitanata and some from Taranto and the Salento peninsula. The absence of Sicilian material is notable, although this is explicable given the breach between island and mainland after 1282, and suggests that much of the pottery dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The extensive pottery presence and the numerous fragments of glassware may suggest that the castle remained a relatively high-status residence into the late Middle Ages.
Yet your reviewer must confess to feeling somewhat disappointed with the results of such a lengthy investigation. This is on two grounds. First, the review of the written evidence, such as it is, is somewhat careless, and contains too many minor mistakes, and one glaring and major error. Flambard Hérichier claims that in 1094 Duke Roger Borsa gave Scribla to "St. Peter," but recovered it in an exchange sixteen years later (17). But in fact the duke gave Scribla not to the papacy but to the abbey of Holy Trinity, Cava, the abbot of which was called Peter (he was one of the leading churchmen of the time and is extensively attested). Such an elementary misreading of published Latin documents does not give one much confidence in the rest of the analysis. I also wonder whether a reference to "Normans" as late as 1193, cited from what is claimed to be a "peace treaty" (23), and inadequately referenced, does not derive from an early modern forgery. Certainly I know of no other mention of "Normans" in southern Italy at a date anywhere near as late as this.
Secondly, while undoubtedly the archaeology does contribute new knowledge as to the plan, development and destruction of the castle (the latter dated by C14), and gives interesting sidelines--such as the presence of extensive stores of grain (wheat, mixed with spelt and rye) and dried vegetables when it was burned down (where did this come from, given the lack of arable land in the immediately surrounding area?)--relatively little of the evidence so painstakingly catalogued (with the exception perhaps of the pottery) actually contributes to an interpretation of the site, or to a wider understanding of the Calabrian economy, or of Calabrian society in the later Middle Ages. Yet that, of course, is the problem with archaeology. Until one conducts an excavation, one cannot know whether it will really prove useful. Perhaps the best one can hope for is that when the results of this project are assessed alongside others, then the interpretation and the value of this site may become clearer.