ETHNO-PREHISTORY MUSEUM "ALFONSO PICIOCCHI" - CAI NAPLES A museum on prehistory and on pastoral, rural, mountain culture in Campania and Southern Italy

see also https://lnx.cainapoli.it/wordpress/museo/ (in Italian)

 

How the Museum was born

The Museum is part of the Naples chapter of Italian Alpine Club (CAI), a 150 years old Society. Its members include archeologists, geologists, naturalists, botanists, vulcanologists and speleologists. Such people have a deep knowledge of mountain terrains and their features, including:
•    naturalistic aspects (geology, botany, landscape history);
•    presence of men and their interactivity with the terrain.

Alfonso Piciocchi, leveraging on such competences, began setting up a few windows to display and describe finds from the explorations of the Speleologic Team that was active in the Section. A big help came from gelogists (Paolo Scandone, Italo Sgrosso, Antonio Rodriguez, Silvio Di Nocera). Then paleontologists and botanists were added to study the fauna and the environment in prehistoric ages (Carmela Barbera, Amalia Tavernier, Annamaria Conte, Anna Virgili). Later, more geologists were involved (Lodovico Brancaccio, Antonio Cutilli).

In 1984 the Naples CAI Chapter was assigned some premises in Castel dell'Ovo (the Egg Castle). In these rooms, Alfonso Piciocchi set up many display windows, to pursue his goal of science communication.

Museum Mission

The Museum Mission is clearly defined in Art. 3 of the Ruling Act, endorsed in march 2022:

"CAI Naples established the Museum structure, with the aim of saving and ordering the items contained therein. The ordering criterion shall be chronological, mainly for didactic purpose.
The goal is stimulating interest in
•    Prehistory,
•    influence of climate,
•    mankind evolution and settlement in historical times,
•    importance of finding a new equilibrium between human activities and natural resources.

In substance, the Museum is a non-profit organization, acting in favor of the Community by
•    researching, obtaining, and saving items that provide evidence about mankind and its environment
•    exhibiting such items for study, learning and communication."

 

Organization of the displays in the Museum

There are 2 main Areas
•    One is allocated to Prehistoric Finds
•    One is allocated to Ethnography and Country Culture

In the Prehistory Area, the windows are arranged in chronological order. So, the visitor will find •    one room containing finds from Paleolithic age, •    the second room with finds related to Mesolithic and Neolithic ages •    the last room with finds from the Metals Age.

The area pertaining to Ethnography includes three sections: •    the first section is about a New Guinea tribe that lived long in a paleolithic economy (the rich collection of tools and photos was donated by the ethnologist Carlo de Martino to the CAI association); •    the second section is about pastoral world, which, according to the theories of Salvatore Puglisi, is connected to the prehistoric culture of Apennine civilization (middle and late Bronze age; •    the third section is about Italian Country Culture. It contains a rich collection of items, collected by Association members in various sites.

 

Where do our prehistoric items come from?

The prehistoric sites explored by our speleologists are generally located in the mountains surrounding the plain of Sele river, south of Salerno.
In the last 100 thousands years, men settled in this area, displacing previous populations.
We know little about relationships between different human peoples.
They found caves that could host them, not far away from silica sources.

 

The Museum website

This site has been designed with the aim of making publicly visible
•    the images of objects found by our speleologists in their explorations;
•    the papers published by Alfonso Piciocchi and other authors, describing the prehistoric sites.