Rosa Maria Cucco

This new contribution aims to provide an overview of the scientific and popular activities carried out, during 2016, by Sezione Archeologica of Soprintendenza BB.CC.AA. of Palermo. In relation to the previous contribution about the activities of 2015, we have tried to create more extensive forms, also correlated with an essential bibliography. Once again, above all the daily work of protecting the territory and the interventions of preventive archaeology (both public and private) have allowed to highlight significant results and archaeological innovations that concern the entire territory of the province of Palermo; of course, the contributions are preliminary reports, however we believe it is right to make available to the scientific community the new data collected, even if still in the study phase. Moreover, the Unità Operativa Beni Archeologici has been engaged – as it has been previously – in activities of scientific valorisation and communication, also with important repercussions in the field of social commitment, confirming the role of cultural "control" that this Institute plays, in spite of everything.

This contribution presents a group of archaeological finds dating between the Archaic period and the Hellenistic period, which, by tipology and group class of materials, might come from Monte d'Oro of Montelepre, site of an important indigenous settlement, probably the Sican town of Hykkara. The materials were delivered anonymously to the Carabinieri and assigned by the Court of Palermo to the Soprintendenza of Palermo, which, in agreement with the municipality of Montelepre, has exposed a selection at the Civic Museum, located inside the Tower of Ventimiglia. Among the most significant finds there is the bottom of a black-painted late archaic cup engraved with a primer in Greek characters.

The topographic location of Alia, near the source of Torto and the upper course of Platani river, makes its territory a highly promising contest from an archaeological point of view. The hydro-morphological characteristics fostered a varied exploitation of the territory and, over the centuries, facilitated the human settlement in the more suitable places, especially in relation to the possibility of finding food resources through agriculture and hunting. The current landscape preserves many traces of the past, consisting of ruins, caves and "grotticelle", areas of clay fragments, which can be interpreted as ancient settlements (farms, villas, seasonal shelters, tombs), in many cases located along tracks (trazzere), often frequented since Prehistory. This historical synthesis between Prehistory and Middle ages comes out from an archaeological knowledge restricted to the portion of the Alia territory which, starting from the archaic period, corresponded with the chora of the Greek colony of Himera, investigated through surface surveys by the University of Palermo in agreement with the Soprintendenza.

The contribution is intended to provide a brief summary of activities of 2015 carried out by the Unità Operativa Beni Archeologici of Soprintendenza of Palermo. Through public and private works of safeguard, of restoration, but also of teaching and publications, significant historical and archaeological data related to the territory of the province of Palermo emerged, and it was significantly important let these data known, although in a preliminary form, through the pages of our Newsletter. Obviously, the most interesting researches will be subject to scientific publications by those responsible, both archaeologists of the Superintendent and scientific collaborators with whom you share the commitment of archaeological research, always rewarding despite of the great economic and operational difficulties faced by the Italian Cultural Institutes.

Mount Alburchia (969,8 m high), a well recognizable relief in the southern sourroundings of the town of Gangi, was probably inhabited from archaic to the Late Antique (IV-V AD). To this later settlement are referred the stone walls and the finds unearthed by Vincenzo Tusa's excavations on the Mount, in 1958. There are two necropolis, one of them used in the period between the Classical and the Archaic Age (VII-V BC), while the other of the Hellenistic period (IV-III BC). The latter, located along a path from “case Salerno” to the Mount, was probably connected to the cult of the deads as heroes, inside niches carved the rock (aediculae), some monumental, located on the northern steep slop of Mount Alburchia. All of them were completely unearthed during the excavation campain carried on, between 2014 and 2015, from the Soprintendenza BB.CC.AA. of Palermo, in collaboration with Santo Ferraro. This sacred complex near Gangi, frequented during Hellenistic and Roman period, has several direct comparisons with several other Sicilian sites.

This paper takes into examination two different districts of the vast area investigated by the archaeological survey of the hinterland of the ancient Greek colony of Himera: the coastal area between the northern Imera and Rocella rivers and the hilly watershed zone located between the northern Imera, southern Imera and Platani rivers. The study examines the relationships between geomorphology, post-depositional processes and visibility of the ground and their impact on the interpretation of data collected during the archaeological survey and, consequently, on the historical reconstruction of the population of the territory from Prehistory to the Middle Ages. Three aspects in particular have been taken into consideration: a) the impact of geomorphology on the recognition of archaeological traces; b) the relationship between geomorphology and visibility of archaeological finds; c) the role of the geomorphological and/or of the human factors in the selection of areas to be settled. Our...

This volume consists of a series of archaeological scientific articles by colleagues who have had the opportunity to share their work with Stefano Vassallo, being able, in this way, to appreciate the professional and, even more, human qualities with which he has carried out his work in his more than thirty-year career.

Studies on Medieval Sicily are currently renewed by research undertaken by different teams from various regions of Europe (Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Austria, Poland). Post-roman Sicily is a sort of palimpsest of Mediterranean dynamics in which continuity, transformation, innovation and resilience were connected to a wider frame of political change: role in the Byzantine State, Islamic conquest, Norman domain and the emergence of Swabian.
The challenge of approaching Medieval Sicily with this proposal is to analyse and interpret the materiality of these many 'transitions' on archaeological records.
This session aims to show the main results of those ongoing archaeological and historical works at medieval suburbia and rural sites of Sicily. It is thus intended to update traditional views regarding the evolution of this territory from Late Antique to the Middle Ages by bringing into consideration new data recovered from archaeological excavations undertaken in several sites across Sicily, new information coming from the review of written accounts and new reflections from contrasting both material and documentary records.
In particular, the session will address the following topics:
- Dynamics of rural settlement patterns.
- Suburbium between countryside and city.
- Landscape of power: churches, monasteries and palaces.
- Material culture and economic trajectories beyond the cities.
This session will be therefore a necessary space of discussion between the different European scholars currently engaged in the study of Medieval Sicily in order to compare data, results, methods and new theories.