Valle Fredda, with its geographic position gravitating on the important various axis linking up the Pescasseroli-Candela cattle-track with the other ones of the High Molise, though it has the characteristics of a secondary settlement respect to the principal Samnite centres, represents an important place in order to transfer the herds from the height to the plain and vice versa, and in this perspective, in the next years, the archaeological survey could develop a relevant role to verify the expansion and importance of this settlement. The fertile slopes of the area are particularly suitable for the cultivation of cereals, legumes and vineyards, besides for breeding.
The territory of Macchiagodena stayed substantially unexplored, though, until now there were remarkable, sporadic findings, as for example a Schnabelkanne bronze jug of the end of the 5th and beginning of 6th century B.C., three bronze pails and two pans of the first Roman imperial age, whose handle looks like a left forearm with open hand and goose head, coming from undefined resorts, now in the Provincial Samnite Museum of Campobasso, a marble statue and brick ruins found in 1833 in the resort of Santo Stefano and a rare bronze coin attributed to the mint of Venafro “from the above mountain of Frosolone”.
Now in the same resort of Santo Stefano, lot of Cepario, they recovered a fragmentary funerary stele with a feminine figure togated in limestone of the 1st century B.C. (93 cm. long; 95 cm. high; 32 cm. thick) and two big bricks, preserved at the town hall. In the resort of Santa Lucia, among ancient ruins, the funerary inscription CIL IX, 2571 was found.
In the territory of Frosolone, a polygonal boundary wall is quite renowned. Moreover, in the square in front of the town hall, a nice, Roman funerary lion in limestone has been conserved, showing evident traces of re-utilization as a fountain and finding different comparisons in the Samnite sphere. The territory was supposed to pass, at least in the Roman age, to the close one of Bovianum.
Outlining the fundamental and natural function of transit place of the area through the territory analysis, the study of the landscape, in order to find some Roman-epoch rural settlements, also allowed to identify a wide area settled in Hellenistic epoch in the resort of Fosso Pampalone-Piana D’Achille, situated at 860 m. on the sea-level.
The discovery has been possible thanks to the systematic and topographic recognition of the territory started up in 1996 in the province of Isernia.
The resort of Fosso Pampalone-Piana D’Achille has a primary role in the study of pre-Roman settlements as its half-coast position highlights the sites before the Samnite wars and its relation with a road network, which was unknown till now.
The main street axis of the examined territory was constituted of a country road, still partly practicable, which from the resort of Centomani, through Incoronata, San Sisto, Santa Maria in Pantano reached Fosso Pampalone and then crossed Colle San Martino – where recently a little temple has been found -, going on to Frosolone, where a fortified, polygonal, boundary wall is quite renowned. The I.G.M.I. document scale 1:25000 reports that in the area there is a road called “Via Vecchia”. During the agricultural works in the resort of Fosso Pampalone, some private people have found out many ceramic finds.