Panel 8.16 – City and territory in ancient Sicily


Organiser/Chair:

  • Erich Kistler (University of Innsbruck)

Paper abstracts

1. Roksana Chowaniec (University of Warsaw) / Rosa Lanteri and Maria Musumeci (Polo Regionale di Siracusa per i siti e musei archaeologici)

The exploitation of landscape and raw materials in the ancient Akrai, in south-eastern Sicily, since its foundation
The presentation will bring the studies to the ancient Akrai, a Greek colony, founded in the interior of Sicily in 664/663 BC, in the part of the Hyblaean Mountains. The town developed while centuries, with an intense architectural boom in the second half of 3rd c. BC. After the fall of Syracuse in 212 BC, town was incorporated into the Roman province and functioned till Late Antiquity. The excavations brought to the light the remains of various phases (also households), showing stages of redevelopment and usage. Particularly Late Antique phases showed changed the previous urban design and function of the residential area, and were solely connected with zone of craft activities rather than habitation. The intensive manufacture and using raw materials is confirmed by a huge amount of different products (sulphur, bone and antler artifacts, iron) and semi–finished products, numbers of tools, small furnaces and lime kiln. But the exploitation of landscape and raw materials begun here much earlier. Already the Syracusan exploration since 1 half of 7th c. BC brought building activity and created a demand for stone, what resulted in two quarries created in the town, later were used for Christian necropoleis. Land was also wrested from the island nature for farming, planting, but also manufacturing (bone-carving, clay-production (?). Thanks to the interdisciplinary studies we are closer to understanding the processes of deforestation or exploitation of raw materials.

 

2. Johannes Bergemann (Universität Goettingen)

The Hinterland of Agrigento - Surveyresults from Monti Sicani
The University of Goettingen Survey in the Hinterland of Agrigento is now in the phase of preparation for publication. The results of intensive and extensive field walking on some 200 sq kms discovered the settlement system between copper age and middle ages. The paper will focus on the relations between inland and coastal areas around Agrigento in Greek and Roman times. The Monti Sicani can be regarded as area of influence from the time of the Greek colonisation and the founding of Akragas onwards. After a crisis in the hellenistic period the Roman settlement system in the Hinterland of Akragas gives a starting point for new developments in the extraurban area, which might support the flourishing of the city of Akragas itself in Roman times. Economic specialisation in sulfor mining and grain production semms to be evident.

 

3. Rodolfo Brancato (Università degli studi di Catania)

Rural Networks in Sicily: the Archaeology of Rural Landscapes in the Plain of Catania from the the Hellenistic to Late Roman period
My presentation seeks to outline the main developments in settlement organization in the Plain of Catania from the Hellenistic to Roman period, through the creation of a complete gazetteer of the archaeological sites, in order to fill our knowledge gap on “peripheral landscapes”. The rural landscape of Sicily is not one of the most studied of the Mediterranean: archaeological studies have traditionally preferred urban to rural landscapes, and this has only recently begun to be redressed. A systematic research on the rural landscapes of the Plain of Catania started in 1996 when a series of topographic surveys were carried out according to the Forma Italiae Project’s methodology. Mostly covering the western portion of the plain of Catania, due to their unexploited potential, these topographical surveys are of great interest for any attempt at analysing rural landscapes: within the survey area (500 kmq ca.) 203 new sites were identified, dating from the Neolithic to the Medieval period. Together with the legacy data available from eastern Sicily, the survey data were stored in the Ru.N.S (Rural Networks in Sicily) database. The results obtained through the use of the Ru.N.S database provide a vivid image of rural population trends in eastern Sicily in ancient times, and may help in reconstructing the organization of this agrarian territory between the Hellenistic and Roman ages with the contribution of epigraphy, numismatics and remote sensing.

 

4. Alessandro Corretti, Antonino Facella, Chiara Michelini, Alfonsa Serra and Maria Adelaide Vaggioli (Scuola Normale Superiore)

Self-sufficiency and integration in wider production/exchange networks at Entella (Sicily) and in its territory: continuity and transformations from Archaic to Byzantine age
Thanks to 35 years of systematic research at Entella (Contessa Entellina, PA - Italy), the SAET Laboratory of the SNS can now manage complex data from both excavations in the town and surveys in the surrounding territory.
This has allowed us to reconstruct patterns and trends of human settlement from Prehistory to modern times, and to check cases of continuity or transformation in landscape exploitation strategies, especially in connection to major social and political changes.
We will briefly discuss some case studies: the transition into polis of the settlement of Entella in Archaic age; the complex events involving Entella from the settling of Campanian mercenaries at the end of 5th cent. B.C. to the First Punic War; the Romanization and its effects on economy and land organization; the abandonment of Entella in the Early Imperial age; the consequences of the Vandal conquest of Africa on local economy; land-property features in Roman and Byzantine ages.
In all these cases, the analysis of rural settlement trends and of material culture in the investigated area (production for self-consumption, import/export), combined with data from the urban settlement, spreads new light on the diachronic knowledge of production and exchange systems in local economy, showing how they were affected by large-scale transformations in protohistoric, ancient and late-antique ages.