Da Cairate a Palazzo Pignano: alcuni esempi di granai di età romana con pavimento sopraelevato

The analysis of the storage facilities for cereals in the rural villages during the Roman Age in Lombardy has experienced a considerable delay in comparison with the other parts of northern Italy and the western provinces of the Empire. In order to fill the gap, the present study deals with the evidence of granaries whose pavements were raised on dwarf stone walls. The first example was discovered in the villa in Cairate (VA). The corpus is very limited, but the traces are scattered both in the pre-alpine area and in the middle and lower plain with different geomorphological conditions and during an extended chronological period (I-IV century AD). Therefore, it is believed that the diffusion of the facility was the result of its excellent storage capacity for cereals.