New findings concerning the imperial court at Lucca and the city’s mint: a reinterpretation of the stratigraphic sequence and pottery finds from the Piazza Giusto excavation (6th-16th centuries).|Nuovi dati sull’area della corte regia di Lucca e sulla zecca urbana: una rilettura della sequenza stratigrafica e dei reperti ceramici dello scavo di Piazza San Giusto (VI-XVI secolo)

In the course of 2009 a trial excavation was carried out, under the Superintendency for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of Lucca and Massa Carrara, in the area south of Piazza San Giusto in Lucca. This is on the site where, as of the Lombard era, the city’s Imperial court stood. The excavation was requested following the discovery of a considerably large wall, interpreted as the “wall of the (medieval) mint”, which occurred the previous year during maintenance work to lay a gas pipe. Thanks to a convention drawn up between the Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge at Pisa University and the Superintendency of Lucca and Massa Carrara, for the purpose of studying the areas of public power in the city, we were able to make a detailed study of the documentation and pottery finds from the 2009 excavation, which we present in our article. The first part of the article outlines the stratigraphic sequence reconstructed on the basis of the excavation report and the records made of each archaeological feature. In particular, a masonry structure with a number of burials and a well alongside it, dating to the Early Medieval period (6th-7th centuries) was followed, between the 11th and mid-12th century, by a series of metallurgical kilns and a spoil heap that yielded several small crucibles. In the mid-7th century the area was occupied by a large building, having a large tank, and with associated remains of new metallurgicical activities that included bronze-working, placed beneath an outer roofing. These activities continued in the 13th century, before coming to an end between the 14th and the 15th centuries, when the roofing collapsed. Finally, at the start of the 16th century, the area was razed, and at the end of the century it was redesigned as a piazza. There follows a description and discussion of the pottery finds, and a typological and quantitative study of them is presented, as well as a catalogue of the diagnostic sherds, along with illustrations, and a reconstruction of the suites of ceramics in use in this part of the city between the 11th and the 16th centuries. Among the finds made, special attention is paid to the crucibles from an 11th century waste tip: thanks to the archaeometric analyses conducted by the CNR in Pisa, it was found that these items were used for smelting silver, and therefore they may have been connected to the city’s mint. In the conclusions, the findings that emerged are discussed in the light of information known about the area of the Imperial court in Lucca, and its mint.