The Heritage of Eastern Mediterranean Cultures in Greco-Roman Town of <em>Akrai/Acrae</em>, SE Sicily

The chapter presents new studies of a material culture, recently excavated within ancient town Akrai/Acrae, south-eastern (SE) Sicily, and shed light on the rich history of acculturation and assimilation of the local traditions with Eastern Mediterranean cultures (e.g. Greek, Aegean, Cyprus, and Levantine). The Akrai/Acrae, founded by Syracuse and being for centuries a part of Syracusan Kingdom, after the Roman conquest in 212 BC, similarly to many other Sicilian urban centres, became a part of Roman province. From the very beginning, the links with the East in this region are evident, both in the legal rules adopted here (e.g. lex Hieronica) and in the religion (e.g. cult of Cybele), but above all in the iconography and in the material culture. Many finds (e.g. pottery, terracotta figurines, glass, lamps, and jewellery), discovered within the excavations between 2009 and 2020), are an excellent confirmation of these long-distance relations throughout the town’s history. These cultural implications and imports embraced mostly the Eastern Mediterranean producers and suggest strong economic and other contacts of the population of south-eastern Sicily with the centres in the East

Evaluation of the technological features of late roman cooking ware classes from Akrai (Syracuse, Sicily)

In this work, a provenance and technological investigation on cooking-ware potteries from the ancient Greek -Roman town of Akrai (Palazzolo Acreide, Syracuse, Sicily) has proposed. A multi-methodological approach have been used to study the manufacture quality of analysed materials; in detail, petrograp hic, mineralogical, spectroscopic, chemical, porosimetric and micro-morphological analyses have been applied. The study providesfundamental contribute in archeological issues related to circulation in Sicily of cooking -ware productions during Late Roman Age; in fact, the obtained results allow to recognize in the site the presence of different well-known cooking-ware Roman productions, highlighting interesting questions about the technological and manufacture properties of this class of materials

Pottery production during "romanization" of Sicily: an archaeometric study of plain table-ware classes from ancient Akrai (Sicily)

In this paper, petrographic, mineralogical and chemical analyses have been performed on plain table-ware fragments discovered in the ancient town of Akrai (modern Palazzolo Acreide, Syracuse, Sicily) and dated between the Hellenistic and the Late Roman periods (4th-5th/6thcentury A.D.). The project is developed in the context of the archeological debate on the cultural and political process occurred in Sicily since the 3rd century B.C. and known in archaeological literature as Romanization. In this framework, a gradually substitution of Greek-Hellenistic materials with the Roman ones has occurred in Sicilian colonies and the city of Akrai was deepened involved in this process. As the sensitiveness of material culture to cultural and social changes, the archaeometric investigation has been focused on provenance and technological manufacture aspects of table-ware production, in order to delineate the eventually changes took place in the area during the investigated period. The comparison of obtained data with numerous references local groups of ceramics allows to identify different highly specialized local productions, drawing-back the commercial movements of potteries in Sicily during Roman Age

Comparison of the results of magnetic and gradient surveys with the real situation in the field on the basis of excavations at Akrai/Acrae, south-eastern Sicily. New possibilities for the interpretation of geophysical maps

N

The popularity of the Ricci C type of wheel-made lamps in southeastern Sicily: questions and hypotheses

At Akrai in southeastern Sicily, the University of Warsaw excavations have unearthed a huge quantity of small, wheel-made, beige-slipped lamps belonging to the Roman Republican type Ricci C. The most important conclusions from the research concern the functionality of these lamps, both as devices used for lighting in everyday life and as unused elements of votive deposits, as well as their enduring presence in southeastern Sicily when they had all but disappeared elsewhere in the Roman world. The type is a derivative of an old form and peaked in popularity in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. The last examples of this type seem to have been produced in the reign of Augustus

Dietary preferences of the inhabitants of ancient Akrai/Acrae (south-eastern Sicily) during Roman times and the Byzantine period

This paper presents new insights into the ancient inhabitants of Akrai and seeks to confront the Roman literary tradition and iconography with bioarchaeological data and archaeological artifacts. The paper also contributes to the debate regarding the nature of the Roman diet – with the traditional view (based solely on written and iconographic sources) emphasizing luxurious consumption, extravagant feasts and exoticism. These considerations apply only to the newly available data from recent studies of the ancient town of Akrai/Acrae, located in the interior of south-eastern Sicily, in a strategic location atop a naturally-fortified hill. Although the town has a very long history (it was founded as a Greek colony in the middle of the 7th century BC), the discussion pertains solely to the Roman Empire and Byzantine periods. The chapter is mainly concerned with the osteological material, supplemented by descriptions of certain botanical and archaeological artifacts which provide a complementary picture of the diet. The osteological evidence is also used to address the possible relationship between diet and landscape. Our main findings are that the diet of the inhabitants of Akrai/Acrae was not as varied and elaborate as it is illustrated in ancient written sources and iconography. The diet was based primarily on meat and other products of domesticated animals (especially cattle, sheep and goats, and less frequently pigs and chickens), supplemented by local wild mammals and birds, and by commonly-available plants, and was only slightly diversified by seafood produce from the sea

Unwrapping the micro-history of a house cistern from ancient Akrai/Acrae (southeastern Sicily)

The paper looks into the turbulent history of the ancient town of Akrai/Acrae in a mountainous part of southeastern Sicily, encapsulated in the assemblage of finds from a domestic cistern, which was remodeled and adapted in the course of its use. The cistern is considered as an architectural feature against the background of the ancient town, and the assemblage recovered from it is exmined thoroughly category by category, giving insight into the life of the ancient inhabitants of this island in the Mediterranean

Géoarchéologie des îles de la Méditerranée

Parmi les dix mille îles et îlots de Méditerranée, moins de trois cents seraient habités et seulement deux cents mesureraient plus de 5 km2. Ces îles sont des entités géologiques et géographiques complexes où coexistent des formations de roches très anciennes et d'autres créées très récemment (îles volcaniques). A la fois ouvertes sur l'horizon et les côtes continentales voisines, elles restent, paradoxalement, relativement fermées de par leur isolement, créant ainsi des spécificités quant à leur biodiversité et leur colonisation par les sociétés humaines. Les îles de Méditerranée forment ainsi un objet d'étude privilégié pour la géoarchéologie. Celte dernière emprunte les concepts, les méthodes et les techniques de disciplines relevant des sciences humaines et environnementales (l'archéologie, l'épigraphie, la philologie, la géographie. la paléoécologie, la paléontologie...). Cet ouvrage établit un premier état des connaissances dans le domaine de la géoarchéologie des îles de Méditerranée. L'éclatement géographique de ces dernières, ainsi qu'une histoire de l'occupation propre à chacune, démontrent toute la difficulté de globaliser ces espaces géographiques, progressivement transformés en territoires sous l'action répétée des sociétés humaines. Des spécialistes dressent ici les relations complexes entre les dynamiques et les processus paysagers et les logiques d'occupation humaine depuis la fin du Pléistocène. Le présent ouvrage recueille vingt-quatre contributions regroupées dans cinq parties intitulées « Anthropisation et mutations paysagères à la transition Paléolithique/Néolithique » ; « Mobilité et reconstitution des anciens niveaux marins depuis la fin de la dernière grande glaciation quaternaire » ; « Adaptation aux mutations paysagères à l'échelle intra-site : la nécessaire prise en compte des paramètres environnementaux » ; « Deltas, lagunes et marais : des interfaces propices à l'implantation des sociétés humaines » et « Matières premières ; exploitation et interactions ». Cet ouvrage s'adresse principalement à des spécialistes de géographie, d'archéologie et de paléoécologie mais aussi à un public plus large : étudiants des niveaux L-M-D, enseignants et simples néophytes souhaitant s'initier aux concepts, méthodes et techniques de la géoarchéologie