Pavimenti inediti dalla villa rustica di Santa Venere in agro di Vietri di Potenza (PZ)

From the second half of the 2nd century B.C. to the Late Antiquity, the mountain areas of north-western Lucania were widely occupied by villae rusticae, sometimes very large in size, which were intended for the exploitation of the rich agricultural and pastoral resources of this poorly urbanized territory. This paper focuses on two unpublished pavements belonging to the rural building complex found between 1992 and 1998 by the Soprintendenza Archeologica della Basilicata in Santa Venere, nearby Vietri di Potenza (PZ). In particular, they are a cement floor (“cementizio a base fittile”) with rectangular tesserae, which decorated a living room from the first phase of the structure (1st century BC), and a terracotta floor, which covered a courtyard built in the subsequent period of use (2nd-3rd century AD).