VC·1 Vercelli

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Object
Classification:	boundary stone
Material:	stone
Size:	height 142 cm, width 70 cm, thickness 22 cm
Condition:	damaged, incomplete
Archaeological culture:	Late Republican
Date:	first half of 1st c. 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)
Inventory no.:	2617
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 = Colombara 2011: 40, fig. 2), Tibiletti Bruno 1977: tav. I (photo), Lejeune 1977: 590, fig. 3 (photo), Lejeune 1988: 28, fig. 14 (photo) and 29, fig. 15 (drawing), Colombara 2011: 41, fig. 3 (photo), Gambari 2011b: 62, fig. 3 (photo).

Rectangular antigorite (serpentinite) 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 m (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 over half a tonne (ca. 600 kg according to Gambari 2011b: 47), 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. (Differently Gambari 2011b: 48.) 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. See Compagnoni & Sampò 2011 for a petrographic analysis of the stone, which appears to have been sourced in the valley of the Dora Baltea around Ivrea, viz. a distance of at least 25 km west of Vercelli.

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

See also Corio 2011, Colombara 2011, Gambari 2011b: 54 f.

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.