Aléria

French commune
nomcommune=Aléria
native_name= Aleria


caption=
région=Corse
département=Haute-Corse
arrondissement=Corte
canton=Moïta-Verde
insee=2B009
cp=20270
maire=
mandat=
intercomm=
longitude= 9.512778
latitude= 42.103611
alt moy= convert|10|m|abbr=on
alt mini= convert|0|m|abbr=on
alt maxi= convert|102|m|abbr=on
hectares=5,833
km²=58.33
sans=1,966
date-sans=1999
dens=33.7
date-dens=1999

Aléria (Ancient Greek Polytonic|Ἀλαλίη, Alaliē and Latin Aleria) is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica. It includes the easternmost point in Metropolitan France.

Administration

Aléria shares the canton of Moïta-Verde with 13 other communes: Moïta, Ampriani, Campi, Canale-di-Verde, Chiatra, Linguizzetta, Matra, Pianello, Pietra-di-Verde, Tallone, Tox, Zalana and Zuani.cite web|title=France, le trésor des régions: Département: Haut-Corse|url=http://tresordesregions.mgm.fr/Mdir.php?p=cant.php&region=94&cl=|format=html|accessdate=2008-05-06 fr icon.]

Geography

Aléria is convert|70|km to the south of Bastia on Route N198, in the centre of the Plaine Orientale, also called the Plaine d'Aléria, the east-central coastal plain of the island facing Italy. It includes a number of villages and monuments. Most of the rest of the island is precipitously mountainous.

The eastern coastline is punctuated by a number of lakes connecting (but not always) to the Tyrrhenian Sea, the remnant of an ancient system of lagoons behind barrier beaches. The Corsicans refer to them under the name of Étang, "pool", although most are larger by far than an English pool. Marshland is also extensive on the coast requiring that cities be built inland from it. Malaria has historically been a problem near the marshlands and swamps of eastern Corsica. The fine barrier beaches are a recreational attraction.

The Tavignano River enters the commune to the northwest and exits into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its lands include a delta, marshes to the south and the unconnected étang de Diane to the north. To the west, the étang de Terre Rosse is a lake and reservoir used to irrigate the plain.

Corsica had an indigenous population in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age but the east coast was subject to colonization by Mediterranean maritime powers: Greeks, Etruscans, Carthaginians, Romans. They typically built on an étang, which they used as a harbor. Alaliē (Ionic dialect) was placed between the southern end of the convert|3.5|km|adj=on long Ētang de Diane and the Tavignanu River (ancient "Rhotanos"), slightly inland, but controlling the entire district including the mouth of the river. The site is partly occupied today by the village of Cateraggio (Corsican U Cateraghju) at the crossroads of national routes N200 and N198. N200 follows the Vallé du Tavignano into the interior mountains of Corte.

When the Etruscans took the district after its abandonment by the Greeks they settled further south along N198 in the vicinity of the village of Aléria, today primarily an archaeological site across the river from Cateraggio, where visitors and academics are quartered. Still south of there was the Etruscan necropolis, in today's Casabianda. Aléria takes its name from the Roman town placed there after the defeat of the Etruscans.

The entire district, however, is wider still, following the Corsican custom of including some mountains and some beaches in every district. It incorporates the agricultural lands of Teppe Rosse (to the west), the entire Étang de Diane and the Plage de Padulone convert|3|km|0 east of Cateraggio, a former barrier beach. Since 1975 a series of laws have created the Casabianda-Aléria Nature Preserve, convert|1748|ha between the mouth of the Tavignanu and the Étang d'Urbinu, which is convert|5|km|0 to the south.

The reserve to the south was initiated from the grounds of the former penitentiary of Casabianda in 1951. It was instituted in 1880 in a then pestilential area which it was hoped the prisoners could farm. It contained 1800 ha and 214 plots. Due to a high death rate from malaria, the agricultural experiment failed.

Economy

L'étang de Diane occupies convert|600|ha; in it the île des Pêcheurs ("Fisherman's Island") features a large mound of oyster shells accumulated from Roman times, when shelled, salted oysters were exported to Rome. A company has revived with success the production of molluscs in the étang. The rest of the commune cultivates vines on convert|408|ha and also citrus fruits. A naturist center is located at Riva Bella.

Archaeology

Hundreds of archaeological sites on Corsica offer a view of an island that has been occupied continuously since about 6500 BC and has never been isolated. If a population can get to Corsica it can maintain contacts especially for trade with other locations in the Mediterranean. The indigenous people of Corsica therefore might have come from any location on its shores. The various archaeological museums of the island preserve ample remains from the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age, with some interpretive or circumstantial variation in the dates. [cite web|title=Archaeological Museums|publisher=Corseweb|url=http://www.corsica.net/corsica/uk/discov/musees/index.htm] Only in the Iron Age (700 BC-) were there any historians to distinguish between the indigenes descending from previous populations and the more recent colonists.

Although no settlements of urban density preceded the first Greek colony, Aléria is unlikely to have been altogether unpopulated. A chance find of an ancient trash pit at a location called Terrina about convert|2|km from the Étang de Diane fills in some of the details concerning pre-Roman habitation. [cite web|first=L.J., Editor|last=Costa|title=Préhistoire de la Corse: Terrina IV (Aléria)|publisher=Kyrnos Publications pour l'archchéologie|date=2005|url=http://www.prehistoire-corse.org/01-annuaires-periodes.html] The pit was excavated 1975-1981 by G. Camps, who found four levels and named the site after the most important, Terrina IV.

Terrina IV features a Middle Neolithic culture in which the use of cattle and pigs predominated, in contrast to the rest of the island, which kept mainly goats and sheep and grew more grain. The Chalcolithic, approximately 3500-3000 BC, arrived by easy transition. The population of the site manufactured arsenical copper and copper goods; moreover, a distinctive socketed crucible has been found throughout the Aegean and in the Levant. The window ends there. [cite web|first=L.J., Editor|last=Costa|title=Préhistoire de la Corse: Chalcolithique|publisher=Kyrnos Publications pour l'archchéologie|date=2005|url=http://www.prehistoire-corse.org/05-03-setchalco.html]

The visible antique habitations at Aléria date to the Iron Age and are consistent with the history. Although ruins on the promontory were noted by Prosper Mérimée in 1839 they were only excavated in 1955 by Jean Jehass and Jean-Paul Boucher. By 1958 the excavators had uncovered the forum of the Roman city of Aleria, first occupied in the 1st century BC.

A pre-Roman, Etruscan necropolis was then discovered convert|500|m to the south (in Casabianda) containing more than 200 tombs. It was excavated 1960-1981. The necropolis had been in use mainly from the 6th to the 3rd century BC and was abandoned altogether with the construction of the Roman city, which started a cemetery to the north. [Citation|last=Allegrini-Simonetti|first=Franck|last2=Guidoni|first2=E., Illustrator|title=Site archéologique: Aleria: le site antique|publisher=Collectivité Territoriale de Corse: Service des Editions de la Direction de la Communication et de la Documentation Service Archéologie et Musées de la Direction du Patrimoine|year=July, 2004|url=http://www.ct-corse.fr/documents/culture/patrimoine/ALERIA.pdf.] No artifacts identifiably Etruscan have been found earlier than the 6th century BC; that is, the Etruscans were most likely intrusive at that time. If there was any Aegean Etruscan substrate it was not on Corsica.

Systematic excavation since 1955 has revealed wide-ranging contacts in the sixth century, through pottery shards in test pits, with Ionian, Phocaean, Rhodian, and Attic black-figure ware. The excavated necropolis of Casabianda's rock-cut tombs have revealed grave goods, from the Late Archaic period forwards, that include the finest works of art, in jewels, weapons, metalwares, bronze and ceramic plates and dishes in particular, Attic cups, rhytons, distinctive kraters decorated by some of the first rank Attic vase-painters. [Stillwell.]

Portable antiquities found in the Aléria commune are presented for public viewing in the Musée Jérôme Carcopino within Fort Matra at Aléria village.

Ancient history

Pre-Roman

According to HerodotusHerodotus, Book I Sections 162-167.] twenty years before the abandonment of Phocaea in Ionia; that is, in 566 BC, Phocaeans colonizing the western Mediterranean founded a city, Alaliē, on the island of Cyrnus (Corsica). Diodorus Siculus"Bibliotheca historica" Book V Chapter 1.] says that the city was named Calaris, possibly a corruption of Alaliē,cite book|first=Ferdinand|last=Gregorovius|coauthors=Edward Joy Morris (Translator)|title=Corsica: Picturesque, Historical and Social|publisher=Parry & M'Millan|year=1855|city=Philadelphia|pages=pages 12-13 Downloadable Google Books.] or a confusion with Calaris of Sardinia. The historical circumstances of Calaris leave no doubt that it was Aleria.

Diodorus says that Aleria had a "beautiful large harbor, called Syracusium," that Calaris and another city, Nicaea, were on it, and that Nicaea had been built by the Etruscans. [Syracusium is not to be confused with the Syracusianos Portus of Ptolemy, which must be either Porto-Vecchio or further south.] Syracusium can only be the Étang de Diane, a lake exiting to the Tyrrhenian Sea. As Aleria and Nicaea were trade rivals it seems unlikely that the Etruscans would have allowed the Phocaeans, who were ancient Greeks, access to Étang de Diane. Nicaea is generally identified with the La Marana district further north, where the Romans later built a city, Mariana, on the Étang de Biguglia, a better harbor. Diodorus says that the cities of Corsica were subject to the Phocaeans and that the latter took slaves, resin, wax and honey from them. Alaliē was then an emporium. Of the natives whom the Phocaeans subjugated Diodorus says only that they were "barbarians, whose language is very strange and difficult to be understood" and that they numbered more than 30,000.

At home Phocaea was the first city of Ionia to come under siege by the army of Cyrus, who were Medes commanded by Harpagus, in 546 BC. Requesting a cease-fire the Phocaeans took to their ships, abandoning the city to Harpagus, who allowed them to escape. Refused permission to settle Oenussae in the territory of Chios they resolved to reinforce Alaliē, but first made a surprise punitive raid on Phocaea, executing the entire Persian garrison. At this success half the Phocaeans reinhabited Phocaea; the other half settled in the vicinity of Alaliē.

In Corsica they were so troublesome to the Etruscans and to the Carthaginians of Sardinia that the two powers sent a combined fleet of 120 ships to root them out, but this force was defeated by 60 Phocaean ships at the Battle of Alalia in the Sardinian Sea, which Herodotus describes as a Cadmeian victory (his equivalent of a Pyrrhic victory) because the Greeks lost 40 ships sunk and the remaining 20 so damaged as not to be battle-worthy. Now unable to defend themselves the Phocaeans took to their remaining ships and sailed off to Rhegium, abandoning Alaliē. The Etruscans landed the numerous Phocaean prisoners and executed them, leaving the bodies where they lay until the oracle compelled a proper burial. As the Carthaginians were not then interested in Corsica, the Etruscans occupied Alaliē and took over dominion of the island, which they held until the Romans took it from them.

Roman

The Etruscans and pehaps others in their turn occupied Alalia. There is no evidence of any other impact of theirs on the island or the indigenous population; the east coast location was simply fortuitous for them. Across the waters, however, rose a power that eventually dominated the entire island and had a lasting impact, changing the language. Alaliē was occupied by the Romans during the First Punic War in 259 BC. Florus says that Lucius Cornelius Scipio destroyed it and cleared the region of Carthaginians ["Epitome of Roman History" Book I section 18.] while Pliny adds that Sulla much later placed two colonies, Aleria and Mariana. ["Natural History" Book III Section 6.80.] Evidently the Corsican Etruscans had been still cooperating with the Carthaginians. Not including them the island was divided into 32 states.

The Etruscans continued to use the necropolis. Subsequently the Etruscan population must have assimilated to a new Roman population in parallel with the assimilation of Etruscans on the mainland. The Etruscan language disappeared and it must have been starting from that time that the island began to acquire its Latin language.

Under the late Roman Republic the Romans decided to build a major naval base on the shores of Étang de Diane. Starting in 80 BC under Sulla as dictator they rebuilt the city on the promontory at Aléria, naming it Aleria. The city rose to prominence under Augustus, becoming the provincial capital of Corsica. Major fleets were stationed on the étang. [Abram (2003).] Ptolemy mentions it but says little about it, only mentioning "Aleria Colonia", the Rotanus River and Diana Harbor. [Book III chapter 2.] He lists the "native races" inhabiting the island, but their geographical coordinates do not match those of Aleria; perhaps the Roman town was not considered among them.

In the later Roman Empire the port and the city declined. It never recovered from a disastrous fire of 410 AD and in 465 was sacked by the Vandals. Subsequently it became a small village of no interest to any major power. These events must mark the end of its classical antiquity. It was buried bit by bit by the Tavignano and the Tagnone, which also created the deadly marshes. The region became subsumed under a Christian parish.

Medieval and modern history

There is some evidence that Corsica was being converted to Christianity in the late 6th century AD. Gregory the great in 597 wrote to Bishop Peter of Alaria to recover lapsed converts and to convert more pagans from the worship of trees and stones. He sent him money for baptismal robes. [cite book|title=Consul of God: The Life and Times of Gregory the Great|first=Jeffrey|last=Richards|date=1980|id=ISBN 0710003463|page=Page 237|publisher=Routledge & Kegan Paul|location=London, Boston] In 601, however, Aleria was without a bishop (see under Ajaccio).

In the 13th century AD Aleria became of interest to the Republic of Genoa. By that time the Latin language was gone but it had developed into Corsu on Corsica in parallel with the development of the other Romance languages. Aleria was the see of a bishop down to the French Revolution. At the end of the Ancien Régime, the bishop no longer lived in Aléria, but in Cervione.

The commune of Aléria was created in 1824, but it did not truly begin to revive until after 1945, after the allies (chiefly American) had undertaken to eradicate malaria (1944). An organization, SOMIVAC (Société d'aménagement pour la mise en valeur de la Corse) was created in 1957 to resurrect agriculturally the entire eastern plain under government sponsorship. It had great success in developing the region. Meanwhile a massive archaeological effort had gotten underway in 1955.

Notes

References

*cite web|url=http://icarus.umkc.edu/sandbox/perseus/pecs/page.134.a.php|first=Richard|last=Stillwell, ed.|publisher=Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites|date=1976|title=Alalia, later Aleria, Corsica, France
*cite book|last=Abram|first=David|coauthors=Geoffrey Young, Theo Taylor, Nia Williams|title=The Rough Guide to Corsica|publisher=Rough Guides|year=2003|id=ISBN 1-84-353-047-3|pages=pages 300-304

ee also

* Battle of Alalia
* History of Corsica
* Mediæval Corsica

External links

* [http://www.aleria-corse.fr/ Official website] fr icon
*cite web|first=Mathieu|last=Piccin|title=FranceVueSurMer.com|publisher=PascalLeFichant.com|url=http://www.francevuesurmer.com/diapo.php?ville=808&langue=uk fr icon. A diaporama of the Corsican coast at Aleria.