NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

3/16/2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES ­Dr. Jean D'Amato, professor of classics in the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University, delivered a presentation at the International Conference on the Arts & Humanities held recently in Honolulu. The conference was co-sponsored by the East-West Council on Education, The Asia-Pacific Research Institute of Peking University and the University of Louisville Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods.

D'Amato's presentation, "Antiquarian traditions in the Phlegraean Fields and the Website Campania Felix, " was complemented by that of an Italian scholar, Dr. Maria Teresa Moccia di Fraia, of the Istituto per la Storia e l'Archelogia della magna Grecia-Taranto-Italy. Dr. Di Moccia di Fraia spoke on "Cuma. The ancient monetary tradition in the Website Campania Felix,"

The Website, which is located at www.nsula.edu/campaniafelix, offers a collection of material regarding the area of ancient Campania with a particular focus on the Phlegrean Fields northwest of Naples, an area rich in classical associations and remains. Before the discovery of the sites covered by Vesuvius in the 18th century, the Phlegrean Fields offered the best preserved and most extensive remains on Roman soil next to Rome.

D'Amato said the site was originally established as a means of extending the impact of a 2000 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers, Campania Felix: Nature, Myth and the Arts of Man co-directed by D'Amato and Richard Monti of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"As the site developed it became a more international project," said D'Amato. "It was difficult to have access to many of the materials on the site and it was important that these materials be brought to general attention."

This collaboration led to Italian archeologist Dr. Vincenzo Di Giovanni being brought to Northwestern as part of the Fulbright Scholar in Residence program.

According to D'Amato, the Website was produced by NSU students, and is now led by Seth Dubois, a graduate student in education, who graduated last year from the Scholars' College. Earlier work was done by David Knox, Michael Thomas, Michael Callac, Kathryn Richards and Chris White.

D'Amato's presentation offered an overview of the Site, along with a focus on one of its units, that dedicated to the crater of Agnano, a lake in the Middle Ages renowned for both its medicinal cures and associations with Purgatory. In this discussion, she showed how the materials on the Website could be utilized in the reconstruction of the history and traditions of the region with a resulting account, also on the Site, to make this material available to both a scholarly and general audience.

In her analagous presentation, Dr. Moccia di Fraia discussed the city of Cuma and its monetary traditon which boasted the only known example of a local mint in the Phlegrean area . This city, the first permanent Greek settlement in Italy, was a vital commercial center and produced a unique type of coinage. In particular, it issued a high volume of fractional ready cash (i.e. change), making it successful in converting foreign values in the multiple transactions through which it grew into a major Mediterranean power.

According to D'Amato, the Website project will be extended to include not only sites and material on Italian soil but also the artifacts that have been preserved in American collections. The editors hope to receive outside funding in this endeavor and look forward to developing an on-line, easily accessible source that will be an ongoing and ever increasing resource for both the academic and more general communities.

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