Celone (in latin Aquilone) is one of the main creeks of Capitanata, with a length of about 43 miles. His journey begins at the town of Faeto, on Mount Saint Vito, from which it was born, and then cross the southern slopes of Mount Cornacchia which, with its 3.780 ft, is the highest peak in Puglia. In its run downstream the Celone creek laps the site of the ancient Eca (near the current Troia), on its left it receives the tributary Lorenzo (which is born near Mount Sidone), then proceeding towards the NE crosses the Tavoliere just at north of Foggia, to finally flow into the Candelaro creek, in the countryside of San Marco in Lamis, which separates the Tavoliere from the Gargano promontory.

The morphology of this sub-region of the Daunia mountains characterized by the Celone creek is typically hilly-mountainous, shaped by both the erosive action and mass movements favored by the nature of outcropping land, by seismicity, as well as by deforesting and tilling the land in Roman times and then, more recently, in the nineteenth century.

From a geological point of view this area includes more or less ancient lands that have been the subject of orogenetic movements linked to the advancement of the Apennine front. In particular, what most characterizes this part of the Daunia mountains is the system of clayey, marl and Flysch layers that are variously overlapped and compressed, locally separated by more recent land formations. These coulters are stretched in the direction of NO-SE, and on these are the largest mountain peaks of the region, laterally engraved by the action of the water.

The tectonic lifting’s phenomena led to the formation of the main peaks (Mount Cornacchia 3.776 ft asl, Mount Sidone 3.481 ft asl, Mount Saint Vito 3.330 ft asl). In the Sierra Pizzuta locality we can observe the calcarenites at Nummuliti (formed in Paleogene), Nummulites were a kind of foraminifera (protozoa) fossils. These organisms had a calcareous shell wrapped in a flat spiral, divided into different chambers by transverse septa. Even though they were single-celled, they could reach considerable dimensions so as to exceed 4-5 inches long some slopes and calcarenites with flint strips and nodules of the red Flysch (Cretaceous-Aquitanian); near Mount Sidone are the calcareous-marly-clayey alternation of the Flysch of Faeto (Burdigaliano-Tortoniano inferior), and inine the clayey Marne of Toppo Capuana (Tortoniano).

Vincenzo Rizzi