Those who think otherwise

Sentences without a label are documented facts; the others are marked "probable" or "uncertain".

On the Bessa and the Salassi scholars do not agree on everything. On one side stand the archaeologists, the geologists and the Spanish CSIC mission; on the other Giuseppe Pipino, who in many essays published between 2010 and 2021 argues for views contrary to theirs. This page sets the positions side by side.

Whose mines were they?

Almost all authors recognise in the Bessa the mines of the Salassi spoken of by Strabo, which then passed to Rome and were contracted out to the publicani. probable According to Rubat Borel the war of 143 BC gave Rome the deposits of the Bessa and those of the Dora at Mazzè and Villareggia. uncertain For Balbo, on the other hand, the Bessa does not necessarily coincide with the mines of the Salassi: the whole Dora basin is gold-bearing and the Bessa is simply the site that has left the most traces. probable Roman mining structures are also found along the Dora between Moncrivello and Villareggia and on the opposite bank, at Mazzè. At Mazzè, too, washing was done with running water, brought by a channel at least 10 km long. probable According to Pipino the mines of the Salassi were elsewhere, on the edge of the Morainic Amphitheatre along the Dora Baltea and the Dora Morta: the Bessa never belonged to the Salassi but to the territory of Vercelli. uncertain

Gianotti holds that before the Romans the Bessa deposit was already being worked by the local peoples, as the pottery suggests. uncertain According to Pipino it was not: the Salassi dug round pits and small heaps, while the Romans washed all the sediment on the spot and left tall parallel heaps like those of the Bessa. uncertain

Sources: Sánchez-Palencia, Vaudagna 2008, p. 2; Rubat Borel 2014, p. 41; Rubat Borel 2019, p. 83; Balbo 2018, pp. 59-60; Gianotti 2011, pp. 183-185; Gianotti 2016, p. 4; Pipino 2021a, pp. 1-2, 6; Pipino 2021b, p. 6

Water and quarrels

Strabo relates that the Salassi diverted the water of the Dora into many channels to wash the gold: in this way they took it away from the farmers of the plain and for this reason the two peoples were always at war. According to Rubat Borel those farmers were the Libui of Vercellae, who asked Rome for arbitration. uncertain According to Pipino, on the other hand, Strabo does not name the Libui and the quarrels took place within the Salassian population itself. uncertain

For Gianotti the water reached the Bessa through an aqueduct about 2 km long. probable Pipino recalls that Domergue considered an aqueduct more than 100 km long from the Dora only as a hypothesis that could not be entirely ruled out; according to Pipino it is very doubtful that the water of the Dora reached this far and the waters of the Viona stream were enough. uncertain Near the Fontana del Roc di Pé the CSIC recorded a water basin that would have served to push the waste towards the spoil fans. probable According to Pipino these supposed basins are more recent and cannot hold water, because their edges are made of loose pebbles. uncertain

Sources: Strabo, Geography IV, 6, 7; Balbo 2018, p. 59; Rubat Borel 2014, p. 41; Gianotti 2011, p. 185; Sánchez-Palencia, Vaudagna 2008, p. 12; Pipino 2014, p. 25; Pipino 2020, p. 50; Pipino 2021a, p. 7; Pipino 2021b, p. 6

How the digging was done

For the CSIC water was used in every phase of the digging, with parallel furrows dug one after another and the large pebbles piled in rows on top of the furrows already worked. probable According to Pipino all the sediment fell into the washing channel and the large pebbles, already clean, were removed and piled at the sides only afterwards. probable According to Pipino the strips of terrace that were not worked also preserve stretches of ancient tunnels, used to explore or to dig out the gold-bearing layer. uncertain For Gianotti, on the other hand, the few tunnels reported were only exploratory workings, because all the working was open-cast. probable

Sources: Sánchez-Palencia, Vaudagna 2008, p. 12; Gianotti 2011, p. 185; Pipino 2010, pp. 11-12; Pipino 2021a, pp. 5-8

Why 5,000 men and when the mine closed

Pliny mentions a censorial law that forbade the publicani of the gold mines of Victimulae to employ more than 5,000 men. The purpose of the limit is debated: to keep the price of gold from falling, to avoid slave revolts after Spartacus or to limit the profits of the publicani, as Balbo proposes. uncertain According to Pipino its aim was to avoid concentrating too many men or slaves near what was then the frontier of Italy, after the servile wars. uncertain

For the CSIC and for Gianotti the mine was already abandoned by the beginning of the 1st century AD. probable According to Pipino it closed earlier, around the middle of the 1st century BC, when Cisalpine Gaul became part of Italy and the old ban on opening mines mentioned by Pliny was applied there. uncertain For Balbo the end of the contract cannot be dated and does not necessarily mean the end of all extraction. uncertain

Sources: Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXIII, 78; Balbo 2018, pp. 58, 64; Sánchez-Palencia, Vaudagna 2008, p. 4; Gianotti 2011, p. 183; Pipino 2021a, p. 1; Pipino 2021b, pp. 7, 41

Victimulae: a place or a people?

Pliny writes Victumularum aurifodinae in Vercellensi agro, the gold mines of Victimulae in the territory of Vercelli; Strabo calls a village near Vercelli Ictimuli. The village is identified with the hamlet of San Secondo di Salussola. probable

Calleri saw in the Ictimuli an ancient Ligurian people, Gambari a subgroup of the Salassi who had surrendered to Rome. uncertain According to Pipino, on the contrary, the Ictimuli or Vittimuli never existed as a people: Pliny and Strabo name a place and the Latin genitive should be translated "of Ictimuli", not "of the Ictimuli". probable Again according to Pipino, the idea of a Vittimuli people originated with 18th-century historians such as Durandi and Mullatera. probable For Rubat Borel, too, Victimulae was the name of a locality and not of a people. probable

Sources: Pliny, Naturalis historia XXXIII, 78; Strabo, Geography V, 1, 12; Balbo 2018, pp. 57-58, 60; Pipino 2014, pp. 20-26; Pipino 2021a, p. 1; Gianotti 2011, p. 183; Rubat Borel 2014, p. 45

The "limes against the Salassi"

For archaeologists, after the Roman victory of 143 BC the working of the gold passed to the publicani. According to Pipino, on the other hand, after 140 BC the Romans did not enter the plain of Ivrea: they occupied it only around 100 BC, after the victory over the Cimbri. uncertain Between these two dates, again according to Pipino, the Romans laid out a fortified boundary on the south-eastern crest of the Amphitheatre, above the mines, which continued northwards along the Serra and southwards along the left bank of the Dora. uncertain It would be a stone bank at most three metres high, with remains of guard posts often reused for medieval towers and castles; it would begin on the Bric Ronchetto above the Dora gorge at Mazzè. uncertain

Pipino reported the hypothesis to the Soprintendenza in 2000 and the Soprintendenza rejected it in 2003 in an official letter. Other scholars attribute the dry-stone walls around Lake Viverone to other periods: Vercella Baglione to the 5th-6th century AD, Gambari and Rubat Borel to the period between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages; the latter call for targeted research. uncertain

Sources: Balbo 2018, p. 59; Sánchez-Palencia, Vaudagna 2008, p. 4; Pipino 2017, pp. 3, 5-6, 9, 13; Pipino 2021b, pp. 6, 53-54