- Spina
Spina was an Etruscan port city on the Adriatic at the ancient mouth of the Po, south of the lagoon which would become the site of
Venice . The site of Spina was lost until modern times, when drainage schemes in the delta of thePo River in 1922 first officially revealed anecropolis ofEtruscan Spina about four miles west of the commune ofComacchio . The fishermen of Comacchio, it soon turned out, had been the source of "Etruscan" vases (actually originally imported from Greece) and other artifacts that had appeared for years on the archeologicalblack market . The archaeological finds from the burials of spinaaerial photography . Aside from the white reflective surfaces of the modern drainage channels there appeared in the photographs a ghostly network of dark lines and light rectangles, the dark lines indicating richer vegetation on the sites of ancient canals. Thus the layout of the ancient trading port was revealed, now miles from the sea, due to the sedimentation of the Po delta.Spina had hellennised [In An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis by Mogens Herman,ISBN 0198140991,2004,In the Index Spina is labelled as having hellenised indigenous populations"] indigenous population.References
External links
* [http://members.tripod.com/~Centime/Etruscans/eng.html#Spina "Etruscan Engineering and Agricultural Achievements: The Ancient City of Spina"]
* [http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040614/etruscanroad.html Discovery of a section of the Etruscan road that linked Spina with Lucca on the Tyrrhenian sea]
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