ABSTRACTS

1. Giancarlo Germanà, Kamarina and the Museum.

The Archaeological Museum of Camarina is in the territory of Ragusa and represents one of the most important archaeological sites of the Sicily. The Museum is placed in a rural block of buildings of the XIX century, where, in the Greek Age, was the sanctuary of Athena. Paolo Orsi found the temple the last century and actually the naos and the adyton are visible. The first hall contains the underwater collections. The most ancient objects are from wreckage located near Punta Braccetto and date black to the VI century B.C. In this hall are also exposed the weights – sample founded in the sea under the acropolis of the ancient Camarina, a bronze statuette of Arpocrathes (III – II century B.C.) and bronze statuette of Aphrodite (I century A.C.). In the Byzantine harbour of Caucana was founded a female head in white marble, dated black to the roman imperial age, and a silver plate with an inscription of the Byzantine age. To the medieval age date black some object from a wreckage of a galley. The following hall contains the Greek trade amphoras. At the first floor are the amphoras founded in the necropolis of the Rifriscolaro, dated back to the VI century B.C., at the second floor are the amphoras from the necropolis of Passo Marinaro. These amphoras, after the trade use, were changed in tomb (enchytrismos). In the following halls are exposed the prehistoric evidences and the pottery from the archaic age of Camarina. In two glass show-case are exposed the clay statuettes representing a Persephone’s offerent. These statuettes were founded by Paolo Orsi in 1896, in a Persephoneion. In the west hall are exposed the evidences of the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman age. In a glass show-case are exposed the plumb thin layer founded in the foundations of the Athenaion. The last hall of the Museum contain the evidences form the chora of Camarina and the necropolis of the Classic and Hellenistic age, in particular from the necropolis of Passo Marinaro.

2. Valerio Amata, Aegaean-Mycenean Founds in the Facies of Castelluccio.

The Aegean-Mycenaean recoveries of the Early Bronze Age in Sicily show some differences, especially quantitative. Big Aegean, or Aegean-like, and Cypriot pottery containers, for domestic or carriage use, ascribable to Middle Helladic were found in southern area of western Sicily, in Monte Grande site, in Agrigento’s province; also there is Mycenaean, Aegean, or Aegean-like pottery of Late Helladic I-II date. We can mention, besides, the presence of little clay models of hut and temple, which are comparable with those of Minoan and Cyprian area. These recoveries are, probably, the consequence of direct relations with Mycenaean area, determined by the opportunity of finding natural resources and continuing toward west, probably to look for metals.

In regard to eastern Sicily, there aren’t as numerous evidences of contacts with the Aegean region as those examined in Agrigento’s land. For this reason, we suppose that those few objects in eastern Sicily aren’t the result of direct contacts with Aegean-Mycenaean World, but could be objects acquired trough mediation of Aeolian Islands. At last, we can assert that the exiguity of Aegean-Mycenaean presence in the eastern area of the island is the evidence of the indifference of Aegean “merchants” for these places, lacking in particular natural resources. This indifferent is also due to the geographical position, that wasn’t consonant with a course heading for northern zone of the Tyrrhenian side and west.

3. Giuseppe Terranova, Funeral architecture of the Ancient Bronze in the hiblea area: two cases of study.

This paper concerns a short analysis about an atypical typology of scattered monumental rock-cut tombs found in south-oriental and central-southern Sicilian necropolis belonging to the Castelluccio Culture (2200-1450 B.C.). Their façades are embellished by a symmetric sequence of semi-pillars or pillars carved from rock. Such class of sepulchral monuments is the most attested between the architectural variations in Castelluccio funeral contexts. The “monumentalisation” of façades arose from the demand to confer evidence to these exceptional tombs. They are expressions of a peculiar social and cultual context, more complex than it was supposed. The resort to techniques and formal elements extraneous to the native tradition has made inevitable to presume influences from abroad, in particular from Malta.

4. Giovanni Perrotta, Preliminary remarks for the redaction of an archaeological map of the area included in the I.G.M. “Belvedere” map (paper 274, II, NO).

The territory object of this analysis includes the IGM small board: F. 274 II NO (Belvedere).

The aim of this first searching phase is the summing-up of the printed materials to plan afterwards a reconnaissance project. This phase has produced a temporary map, containing the discoveries obtained till nowadays in the area examined. There is an index-card for each site which contains the nature of the discovery (necropolis, area of fictile fragments, rocky installations), the name of places, the Commune of belonging, the description of the site as it is given from who had found or excavated it and the relative bibliography. The article is made of three parts: the geomorphology of the territory, which presents the geomorphologic characteristics of the area; the archaeological chart with the index-card of the sites; and short accounts of the ancient viability, with outlines of the three main transit axis (the Pompeia road, the Selinuntina way and the Helorina one), which connected Siracusa with the rest of Sicily. The chronological period of this analysis goes from the prehistory to the beginning of the Middle Ages.

5. Maria Giulia Morgano, The Torracchio of Curcuraggi near Melilli (Syracuse).

The Torracchio di Curcuraggi is a hill, situed in a handle of the course of the river Marcellino. Only beginning from the years' 60 are been investigated the numerous burials drawn on the rocky walls that coast along the course of the river Marcellino and of the Belluzza. The situated graves in the region Pantalone they are framed in the age of the ancient Bronze (facies of Castelluccio), those situated in the region Fossa, Torracchio, Pantalone di sopra and Pantalone di sotto in age protostorica. Some of the burials of the age of the Ancient Bronze have been used in age protostorica. Of great interest they are the outfits recovered inside the burials, which have returned besides ceramics of local production of good invoice, importations of Greek ceramics among the most ancient recovered in Sicily as the cup to" chevrons" (first half VIII century b. C.) and the “a semicircles penduli” cup (second half VIII century b. C.). The notable documentation coming from the necropolis protostorica is not born by the recovery of relative structures to a contemporary installation to it. Founding itself is on the topographical characteristics of the promontory, both on the archaeological evidences found on the area taken in examination, the rocky spur that constitutes the Torracchio of Curcuraggi is lent to the hypothesis to place really on its summit the installation of VIII century b. C. The optimal position both as it regards the defensive aspect that the possibility of the immediate access to the river made the hill of the Torracchio the most proper place to establish an installation. Following recognitions, the numerous presence of ceramic fragments is visible in surface, whose dating corresponds to that already attributed protostorica to the funeral outfits of the necropolis. The identification of the Torracchio of Curcuraggi as center of the installation to naturally make proto-historic certain an investigation would be necessary that not only of surface and that it investigated the whole area of the valley of the Marcellino to be able to understand in deepened way the dynamic insediatives of this zone of oriental Sicily that purchase further importance if inserted in the tied up stories to Megara Hyblaea.

6. Paolo Daniele Scirpo, On the cults of the archaic sub-colonies in Syracuse.

The incomplete examination still for lack of recent excavations on the cults of the sub colonies in Syracuse has had an interesting substantial datum emerged however: the presence in almost all of some cults reconnected to Corinth through the metropolis. Syracuse moved to the own sub-colonies of age archaic some of the principal cults inherited by Corinth: Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite and Demetra and Kore. This last together with that pan-doric of Athena were supported from the dynasty of the tyrants Dinomenides, the founder of which had been priest of the Goddesses in the chthonian cult. The cult of Zeus instead, also present in Syracuse, is not testified in a lot of his sub-colonies. Some observations however they are to do: the existence of narrow bonds between Syracuse and the other Corinthian colonies in Epirus and Aetolia (Ambracia, Oniadai) and Lokri Epizefiri is testified from the comprise of Corinthians-Lokresi cults that come then diffused in the siceliote sub-colonies. The typology of these cults is constituted is from an Olympic pantheon that from a more small but variegated world of small divinity (nymphs, rivers, etc.). New excavations in the vast buried urban areas still and in the immediate district they will clarify the complex structure of the pantheon of these small splinters of the Hellenism transplanted in Sicilian earth subsequently.

7. Stefania Germenia & Daniela Leggio, The goddesses of the Earth: Demetra and Kore.

In the sanctuaries devoted to Demeter and Kore they were practised the rites to the goddesses, reserved to the women that were reunited in isolated buildings and they practised a real ceremony with sacrifices of piglets, ritual meals and, at the end, the underground deposition of the leftovers of the meal and the offers votive. Characteristic attributes of the two goddesses, with clear reference to the night time rites to them devoted, they are the torch, the piglet and the baskets of offers or a tray with fruit and produced by oven, objects of cult brought by the bidders and represented is in the vascular production (attic and siceliota), is in the statuettes thick fictile recovered in notable quantity interior shot you crowd tied up votive to the demetriac cult. In the site of Eloro the cult devoted to the two goddesses seems to have a great popularity, such to make coexist, for the whole IV century B. C., two sacred places to the demetriac cult and particularly, as he deduces from I ex-vote him deriving from both, to the tesmophoric rite. Within the diffusion of the demetriac cult in Sicily, therefore, Eloro dresses again an important role, at least at all darkened from the extreme proximity with other places of cult devoted to two divinities as the sanctuary of Vittoria Square to Syracuse for oriental Sicily.

8. Angelo Mondo, The imports in the un-hellenic centres of western Sicily.

This survey tries to give a revision about the import of attic vases found into some of the un-hellenic towns of West Sicily (elymo-phoenician areas), which in Beazley’s lists are only seven, that, according to the most recent researches, are two hundred and seventy-eight. The essay starts from the role played by the chair of “Archaeology and History of Greek Art” and from the “Potterygraphic Archive” of University of Catania, both headed by prof. Filippo Giudice, in relation to a renewed impulse of the studies about the historic-commercial topic of attic figured pottery. Afterwards, I focus the importance assumed by the indigenous towns about the probability of finding in them painters/painting groups not yet found, instead, in the coastal colonies “corresponding” to them; in this case it is Selinous, the great colony of Megara Hyblaea, that linked her politic-commercial destiny to that of the un-hellenic towns of western Sicily. Finally, there is a specific analysis of the painting, formal-typological and figured dimensions of the vases found in the places taken into account, divided into every quarter of the two centuries (VI-V B. C.) of the great athenienses pottery graphic season.

9. Maria Agata Vicari, The coinage of Herbessos.

The indigenous centre “Herbessos” went through its greatest moment in the period between 357 B.C. and that following 341 (or 338) B.C., as demonstrated by the quantity of money produced, the metrological analysis and particularly by the overstrikes. The location of the city was in the actual Montagna di Marzo, between Piazza Armerina and Barrafranca, as proved by the finding there of these coins; besides the typological resemblances with the coinage of Gelas and Akragas puts Herbessos at the «ambito di gravitazione» between these two centres. Seven series of coins in bronze and two in silver could be attributed to the city, while there is no example in gold.

10. Elisa Bonacini, The theatre in Syracuse: the Roman phases.

Hard to explain, especially regarding the various construction phases before the Ieronian one, from 238 to 215 B. C., Syracuse’s Greek theatre suffered substantial changes during the Roman Age: it was transformed in a typical Roman theatre, with a stage building architectonically closed to the cavea, a sumptuous scenae frons on different levels (double or three-storey building) decorated with columns, a stage front with alternate semi-circular and rectangular niches, and two pits for the aulaeum. Many alterations carried out also to the orchestra: during the Roman Empire its floor was paved with coloured marbles. A ring columned gallery, running round the rear of the summa cavea, and a L-shaped stoà, are datable to Roman Age rather than to the Hellenistic one. Its countless alterations and spoliations during the ages let us understand the different reconstructions, suggested by scientists, of the stage building, probably dating to the late 1st century or to the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. There is disagreement also on the hypothesis that, in some special occasions, the theatre was used for amphitheatrical games. The swimming-pool for water displays was built in 3^rd-4^th century A.D.

11. Ileana Contino, The building of Vallone Bagni to Centuripe.

Described by travellers and men of letters in the past, the building in “Contrada Bagni” in Centuripe is the most enigmatic of monumental ruins of the Roman city. It is a structure of 5 apsides asymmetrical in train, long more than 30 metres, high 8 metres. The building is about someone (Biscari, Ansaldi, Libertini) a “bath”, that is a thermal complex, about some others (Houel, Belvedere, Wilson) a “Nympheum”. It seems that the scenographic function on the hills below and the comparison with “façade Nymphea” of Asia Minor could strengthen this hypothesis. The date wavers between the Iulio-Claudian age and the middle of the II century A.D.

12. Giuseppina Sirena, Marcello's Guglia: a funeral monument in the Syracusan country.

Between the numerous archaeological evidences in the territory of Syracuse, it is possible to admire the rests of a Roman mausoleum, which has almost preserved intact during the centuries. We immediately can compare it with the so-called “grave of Terone” in Akragas and with the Tripolitania mausolea; with these last it is even possible to establish an onomastic comparison. Difficult, where not impossible, to establish the purchaser of the building.

13. Concetta Stefania Caputo, The Cornelio aqueduct of Termini Imerese.

The Cornelio aqueduct is a very important monument in Termini Imerese, near Palermo; its go back at Roman period. The water going from aqueduct collected on reserve tank; it was distributing trough the pipeline (specus) having the same slope path along (censura declivitatis); the pipeline cross valley with siphon. The aqueduct was building with limestone bricks (opus caementicium), terracotta large pipes, plumb small pipes (fistulae). The race was waterproof (opus signinum). The studies depths date the monument on II sec. B.C.; it was used until early 1800.

14. Grazia Salvo, Some notes on the diffusion of the Christianity to Syracuse in the I Century A.D.

The origins of Christianity in oriental Sicily and to Syracuse are not able today particularly still to be established with certainty. The Acts of the Apostles refer that Paul, during its trip toward Rome, in the spring of the 61 a. C., to Syracuse was stayed for three days. For some studious ones, the presence of the apostle, would testify a meaningful fact for the birth of Christianity in the city by itself. Yet, up to the VIII century is not stood up again in the ecclesiastical authors some relative sign to the apostolic origin of the Syracusan church. It seems very more probable, instead, that the Christian religion is come in the island following the principal routs of the maritime commerce between East and West. The most ancient archaeological and epigraphic testimonies that attest the presence of Christianity in Sicily go up again to the beginning of the III century and they testify like Christianity has taken root, in origin, in the coastal cities of oriental Sicily, between Catania and Syracuse. The crisis that from the slow II century started to notch the unity of the empire and that he forced to reduced communications and narrow movements, it seems to have facilitated, subsequently, a process of consolidation of Christianity which, in fact, thanks to a wide evangelization but more intense can spread in the countries following the secondary runs and the small arteries that put in communication the coastal urban centres with the vast zones of the rural hinterland.

15. Maria Domenica Lo Faro, The registrations from the necropolis of Vigna Cassia to Syracuse. General considerations.

Analysing textual characteristics of the inscriptions coming from the group of Vigna Cassia necropolis in Siracusa, we can point out some epigraphic uses that could supply useful elements for suggesting a dating of the epigraphic material in question; according to the formulary's exam, we can't notice an homogeneity, but we can recognize some cores with more archaic characteristics, which go back to the end of III A. D.; they can be recognized in the material coming from the area SE of San Diego; close to these, it seems possible to date a large part of inscriptions to the first half of IV A. D., on account also of the shortage of references regarding the place of origin and the deceased's profession. Other inscriptions, instead, show more recent characteristics, like the «modern» system counting the days of month in sequence from first to thirtieth or the frequent recourse of commendatory formulas and loving expressions, that could bring back to the second half of IV A. D.; to the beginning of V A. D., finally, we can date a reconstruction of the vestibule P, according to the exam of two inscriptions found here.

16. Tatiana Bommara, New acquisitions of Christian archaeology in the territory of Priolo Gargallo (Syracuse).

The archaeological paper of the paleochristian Sicily has unriched, in the last few decades, one remarkable amount of discoveries, not exclusively limited to the city zones. Above all the Syracusan territory, the largest and by far the best known one, hasn’t revealed its underground world yet; we are talking, in particular, about the many rural cemeteries scattered all over the country, witnesses of the penetration, in this area, of big Christian communities that gave life to a net of centres dislocated mostly along the late-ancient viarium system. These our signallings about the Priolo Gargallo’s territory take place in such context. The study of this Syracusaen small village, situated between the Climiti Mounts and the ionic coast, is getting more and more defined and wide proportions thanks to the latest archaeological discoveries; however it’s impossible to identify, from the historical point of view, this center of Christian life that the numerous catacombs test.

17. Cristina Pavone, The Bath and Church of Rotonda in Catania.

The Rotonda appears as a structure with a square plane, roofed with a big extradossed dome. Within a circular hall is included, eleven metres of diameter, with three large niches. The structure, that was originally part of a wide bath building, was transformed afterwards into the church of St. Maria della Rotonda. Studies and researches, though intermitted, have proved the original thermal destination of the structure, rather than religious. Mostly the archaeological excavations after World War II have explored the monument and the external area. From the analysis of the structures it is possible to reconstruct the history of the building. It is difficult to single out the most ancient period of the Rotonda. Libertini mentions an Hellenistic-Roman level, which we could not trace at all. The bath building seems to date back to an age included between Middle and Late Empire. In the Middle Imperial age the building was a frigidarium. In the Late Imperial age the structure was transformed into calidarium, with the heating system with hypocaust. It is rather difficult to establish the age of transformation of the baths into a church. In this period the tubs within three greatest niches were filled up, leaving the parapets and resting the new floor on their edges, and the northern niche was radically changed, creating a presbytery and an apse. It seems probable that the transformation into the church of the Rotonda took place during the Byzantine revival of Norman age. Undoubtedly during XIII century A.D a complex cycle of frescos were realised on the walls of the church and about the same time should be dated back the alteration of the western opening in an ogival arch.

18. Giuseppe Cacciaguerra, Archaeology of the Early-medieval urban cemeteries in Syracuse. Been actual and perspectives of search.

This paper tries to furnish an account on the cemetery emergencies Early Medieval in Syracuse, trying to bring new given by the analysis critic of the bibliography and delineating, with the other urban cemetery evidences of south-oriental Sicily (Cittadella di Noto and Kaukana), a preliminary picture for the area iblea. The deficiencies met during the study, caused by the diffused presence of dated studies and theoretical and methodological lacks in the study of the cemeteries, have delivered an insufficient and fragmentary documentation today. A classification of the cemeteries (however urban, suburban and extra urban environment) and a chronology of their use is tried, with the purpose to acquire data on specific problems as the entry of the graves in city or the continuity up to the Middle Age of the sepulchral areas of classical age.

19. Cristina Gianino, The Mario Mentesana’s contribution to the knowledge of the territory of Augusta.

Mario Mentesana (1909-1985), born in Ferrara, spent the last thirty years of his life in Augusta, Sicily. Very subtle and critical mind, he was always concerned with the problems about prehistory and history of his adopted town’s territory. This paper purposes to introduce scholars to his contribution, consisting of many publications and discoveries, on account of which he was appointed Ispettore Onorario ai Monumenti from 1965 to 1973. After brief biographical references, the chief discoveries (Neolithic settlement and tomb at Gisira, Vallone Maccaudo prehistoric settlement, Upper Palaeolithic layer at Monte Amara, Neolithic settlement at Campolato, settlement on a rocky spur over Marcellino river) and localizations (Muragliamele necropolis, fortified settlement at Petraro, Pleistocene layers at S. Cusumano, Punta Castelluzzo shelter) are outlined. They are still important landmarks for the study of Sicilian prehistory. The chief finds the excavations and the most important publications are pointed out, particularly his papers published on Notiziario Storico di Augusta (from 1967 to 1987) and his book Storia di Brùcoli (1979). His contribution was rightly appreciated by Luigi Bernabò Brea, Luigi Cardini, Georges Vallet.