VC·1 Vercelli

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Object
Classification:	boundary stone
Material:	stone
Size:	height 139 cm, width 70 cm, thickness 20 cm
Condition:	damaged, incomplete
Archaeological culture:	Late Republican
Date:	shortly before the middle of 1st century BC
Date derived from:	historiography
Site:	Vercelli (Vercelli, Piemonte, Italy)
Coordinates (approx.):	45° 20' 6.43" N, 8° 26' 30.22" E
Find date:	1960
Current location:	Museo "Camillo Leone" (Vercelli)
Inscriptions:	VC·1.1 (finis/campo·quem/dedit·acisius/argantocomateṛ/ecus·comunem/deis·et·hominib/us·ita·uti·lapidẹṣ/IIII·statuti·sunt) VC·1.2 (akisios:arkatokok/materekos:toṣ́o/kote:aṭom:teuoχ/tom:koneu)
Alternative sigla:	Tibiletti Bruno 1981: 34 RIG: E-2 Solinas 1995: 141 Morandi 2004: 100
Sources:	Morandi 2004: 589 f. no. 100

Images

Stela VC·1 Vercelli with inscriptions VC·1.1 and VC·1.2 from Morandi

Stela VC·1 Vercelli with inscriptions VC·1.1 and VC·1.2

Commentary

Images in Baldacci 1978: fig. 1 (photo), Tibiletti Bruno 1977: tav. I (photo), Lejeune 1977: 590, fig. 3 (photo), Lejeune 1988: 28, fig. 14 (photo) and 29, fig. 15 (drawing).

Rectangular mica schist stela with slanting upper edge, found in May 1960 in a flooding zone on the left bank of the river Sesia during the mining of a bank of gravel, at a depth of 2.5 mm (Baldacci 1978: 335) or 4 m Lejeune 1977: 587). Due to the good condition of the stela and inscription, its shape and the weight of ca. half a tonne, Baldacci 1978: 355 f. and Lejeune 1977: 587 f. agree that it was not, as the find place might suggest, transported any great distance by the river, but that it was buried more or less in situ by a collapse of the river bank, possibly as recently as during the building of the nearby railway bridge. Its original position and the campus referred to in the inscription would thus have been located opposite the city of Vercellae, which lies on the right bank of the river. The lower part of the stone is missing, thought to have remained in the ground where the stone had been buried by Baldacci 1978: 335. As seen by Lejeune 1977: 588, a horizontal line at ca. 20 cm from the current edge marks the place up to which the stela was to be buried, to signal the space for the text to the carver; Lejeune estimates that the full height of the stela was around 2 m. According to Lejeune, the stone was used in its natural form and not worked or smoothed; a natural ledge on the right, which was written on, has eroded, causing damage to the final letters of some lines.

Kept initially in private possession, the stela was given to the Museo Camillo Leone in 1967.

Bibliography

Baldacci 1978	Paolo Baldacci, "Una bilingue latino-gallica di Vercelli", Atti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 32 (1977 [1978]), 335–347.
Colombara 2011	Ciro Colombara, "La stele bilingue di Akisios Arkatokomaterecos", in: Gisella Cantino Wataghin (ed.), Finem dare. Il confine, tra sacro, profano e immaginario. A margine della stele bilingue del Museo Leone di Vercelli. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Vercelli, cripta di S. Andrea, 22–24 maggio 2008, Vercelli: Edizioni Mercurio 2011, 33–41.
Compagnoni & Sampò 2011	Roberto Compagnoni, Simonetta Sampò, "Esame petrografico e biologico della stele bilingue del Museo Leone di Vercelli", in: Gisella Cantino Wataghin (ed.), Finem dare. Il confine, tra sacro, profano e immaginario. A margine della stele bilingue del Museo Leone di Vercelli. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Vercelli, cripta di S. Andrea, 22–24 maggio 2008, Vercelli: Edizioni Mercurio 2011, 43–46.
Corio 2011	Amedeo Corio, "Sul ritrovamento della stele bilingue latino-celtica", in: Gisella Cantino Wataghin (ed.), Finem dare. Il confine, tra sacro, profano e immaginario. A margine della stele bilingue del Museo Leone di Vercelli. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Vercelli, cripta di S. Andrea, 22–24 maggio 2008, Vercelli: Edizioni Mercurio 2011, 9.
Gambari 2011b	Filippo Maria Gambari, "Per una lettura "protostorica" della bilingue di Vercelli", in: Gisella Cantino Wataghin (ed.), Finem dare. Il confine, tra sacro, profano e immaginario. A margine della stele bilingue del Museo Leone di Vercelli. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Vercelli, cripta di S. Andrea, 22–24 maggio 2008, Vercelli: Edizioni Mercurio 2011, 47–65.