Over that in the Ovadese, testimonies of the exploitation of alluvial gold terraces exist in other parts of the high Po basin, with the difference that these, situated in areas more subject to the great glaciations, are not directly connected with the primary gold lodes, but are downstream moraine deposits and distanta sometime hundreds of kilometers from the primary ores.  They are situated, or they are signalled, along the whole external front of the Ivrea Moraine Amphitheater, along the Cervo river in the southern part of the city of Biella, along the Sesia near Gattinara, along the Agogna near Gozzano, along the Ticino near Varallo Pombia, Oleggio and of Cameri, along the Adda near Solza.

The deposits of the Ivrea Moraine Amphitheater are the only ones of which we have some historical testimony (Salassi people aurifodinae, quoted by Strabo, and Ictumuli ones, quoted by Strabo and Pliny), but, contrarily to the opinion diffused and divulged by a lot of sources, understood the Piedmont Archaeological Superintendence, the Salassi gold mines don't have nothing to do with the Bessa ones, which are suitable from the same Strabone and from Plinio as mines of Ictumuli, with reference to the near village (today S. Secondo of Salussola) and not as belonging to a presumed Vittimuli population, of which doctor Pipino has recently demonstrated the non existence (see related publications).

The mines exploited by the Salassi are on the southern front of the Ivrea Moraine Amphitheater, where discreet rests can be observed to the sides of two rivers named Dora, namely in the communes of Mazzé and Villareggia to the Dora Baltea both sides, and in the communes of Borgo d’Ale, Alice and Cavaglià to the sides of the Dora Morta (Dead Dora).  The mines of the Bessa, are site on the oriental moraine cord of the same Amphitheater, in area where, contrarily to how much affirmed by officials of the Superintendence, the Salassi presence doesn't result:  Plinio tells that these mines belonged to the Romans and that an ancient senatoconsultus prohibited to the publicans (concessionaires) to use you more than 5.000 men.

The Ivrea Moraine Amphitheater, with schematic course of the anti-Salassi Roman wall and location of the residual pebbles of the aurifodinaes (from PIPINO, 2000)

The precise testimonies of the two classical authors, insert in the historical episodes of the time, allow us to date the exploitations.  The Salassi exploited their mines using the waters of the Dora river, diverting them from their course, provoking frequent quarrels with the agriculturists of the lowland, and giving pretext to the Romans, in the year 143 b.C., to intervene and to take possession of the same mines, that they exploited for about 40 years of opposed possession.  The exploration had term around the year 100 b.C., with the conquest of the Salassi southern territory and the construction of the Eporedia colony (Ivrea).  At the same time the Romans had begun the exploitation in the Bessa area, whose deposits were already probably known and partially exploited by the local populations (libicians-vercellesi).  The recovery of Roman coins and Celtic local ceramic they attest a discreet frequentation during the first half of the The First century b.C.  The abandonment of the mining exploitation, in the Bessa area as in other parts of the Cisalpine Gaul region, it happened in the second half of the same century, due to the nearly total exhaustion of the deposits and, above all, in compliance to the laws that forbidden the mining cultivations in Italy, of which the region had officially entered to make part.

For the other Po plane deposits we don't have historical testimonies, so it is possible that the exploitations are pre Romans or related to the time of precocious Roman military occupation, likewise to how much observed for the Ovada mines.
The Bessa pebble deposits, that are those more known, cover a surface of around 7 squared Kms; they are taller and orderly than the others, probably because they were formed in more recent times, under the forehand Roman control, and are therefore more evident. Some residual edges of the original alluvial terrace underline that this was formed from layers of sand and gravel few or nothing auriferous, for a total thickness varying from 3 to 10 meters, overlapped to an auriferous coarse layer, powerful in average two meters: inside them it is locally possible to observe inclined wells that cross the sterile part and continue with small galleries of taste in the basal coarse level.
Under the terrace covered by the pebble, there are lower terraces, degrading toward the actual rivers Viona, Elvo and Olobbia, constituted from fine materials residual of the washings and, inside these, numerous parallel channels, buried, constituted by pebbles juxtaposed to dry. Some of these channels have been object of archaeological excavations because considered channels of washing, but, as showed by doctor Pipino (see the publication "L’oro della Bessa”), they served to allow the passage of the sandy flood water through the enormous heaps of sterile that went piling up during the washings.
The system of washing is already obviously that suitable for the Ovada aurifodinaes, and, having the sterile sediment a greater thickness, it is not excluded that in some case he also resorted to the system that Plinio calls "ruina montium", consistent in digging galleries through it and pulling down the sediments with sudden waves, system recently used still in America with the name of hushing or booming.
Thanks to theirs recognized archaeological importance, the Bessa pebble deposits constituted a Special Natural Reserve to whose inside were prepared numerous illustrated informative pictures, evident fruit of huge human and economic resources. Not always however the pictures give correct informations, contrarily they give sometimes news and interpretations wrong or deprived of base. For instance, it is sustained, with so much of illustrated stratigraphy, that the gold was predominantly contained in the superficial sandy levels and that the basal coarse one was sterile, contrarily to all the evidences and to how much it is known by the literature.
Also for the washing systems they are furnished so wrong information that graze the grotesque one: "The gold deposit, separated by the heaviest pebbles (which were accumulated in heaps at loose of eye above the already exhausted parts) was brought in small containers (baskets, small floats on the channels) toward the Elvo tall terrace; here was washed in wooden offset channels, to separate the heavy deposit, to sieve. " It is evident that here the industrial cultivation of the gold terraces is confused with the artisan goldpanning practice, that concerns limited bars loosened contained in the river beds. Ridiculous it is also the interpretation gave to a double sterile clearing channel, considered, and underlined with excavations, as it was an elevate water channel: as its edges are made of two files of dry pebbles intercalated by few decimeters of fine loose material, it is to understand effortless, for whoever has a little of discernment, that a so made channel cannot be able to retain the water and that it will collapsed to the first employment.
Wrong news also are abundantly diffused from an Ecomuseum recently founded in the zone, to the Vermogno village, where would have had to be prepared a local section of the Ital Gold History Museum. Doctor Pipino had in fact always manifested a great interest for the Bessa area and, in the years 1985 and 1986, organized, with the collaboration of the local expert Giacomo Calleri, some events that had a great prominence and contributed to make know the place in Italy and in foreign countries (see, in the Museum Archive, the file Bessa n. 14). In the year 1989 he prepared in Biella, a specific exibition on the Bessa gold that was successful (see “La Stampa”, April 5 th 1989), and started contacts with the Mayor of Zubiena community for the preparation of a permanent Museum to Vermogno village: the contacts were concretized with a precise project, that foresaw the preparation of fit structure and the transfer on the spot of the local interest, but then, after a long silence from the town administration, this submitted the charge to a local association, provoking the correct resentment of doctor Pipino, kept to the dark of all (see “Il Biellese”, Nov. 20 1998, and “L’Eco di Biella”, Nov. 23 1998).
It was born so, with the concurs of different corporate body and the disbursement of huge resources of public money, a place cell of the Biella Ecomuseum, entitled "Museum of the Bessa gold", which, according to the principles of the ecomuseums, would have had to pick up and to represent the local historical tradition, based obviously on the most faithful adherence to the reality. The objective has not been however centered, due the lack of tangible testimonies (that, instead, they abound in the Italian Gold History Museum), while mystifications and popularization of false news are wasted.
Indeed, in the illustration of the motives and the facts that are to the origin of the constitution, every reference to doctor Pipino is omitted and it is falsely sustained that everything would have been born for wish of the local association, beginning from the year 1980. To testimony that declaration some articles of newspapers are proposed, deprived however of date, articles that, as verifiable in the collection of the Italian Gold History Museum, are dated 1986 and testify the development locally assumed by the goldpanning contests following the demonstrations organized by doctor Pipino.
More, the greater part of the space of the small structure is reserved to other Italian and foreign gold places, with an unbelievable encumbrance of unlikely modern reproductions of ancient tools. A lot of emphasis is given besides to a collections of dust gold samples that are said coming from different rivers of the Po Valley, while it is notorious that the most greater part of them has been picked in gravel plants, following the indications published in 1984 by doctor Pipino: but if in that time it was possible to connect the gold recovered in the plants with to the near strams, subsequently the thing is not more believable, gives happens prohibition to extract the sand in the rivers and, therefore, the long distance between the plants and the treated material excavation.
False and deprived historical news absolutely of base you/they are still divulged through accurate and expensive panels, Absolutely false or groundless information is spread over by means of accurate and expensive pictures and via Internet. We propose some example of it: ". In the year 898.(concession). of the emperor Arnolfo toward Viking, bishop of Padua, for the whole gold panning in his bishopric"; ". in the year 1519 the dukes of Milan forbade the gold panning in the Ticino river without the special license released by themselves"; ". Georg Bauer (Georgius Agricola).. geologist, mineralogist, humanist and student of metallurgical and mining techniques"; " In the year 1855 a Franco-Sardinian company got the concession for the extraction of the gold in Orba river".
What to say of everything this? We only can regret that so much public money is wasted for so openly spreading false news and to notice whether to know really something of the Bessa gold still it is necessary to go to the Italian Gold History Museum, where many original materials are collected with passion and competence without any increase for the public finances.