Abstract
Abstract In recent years, an on-going project investigating the urban landscape of Naxos has surveyed and produced several new digital reconstructions of the settlement’s simple non-peripteral temples, most with highly decorative roofs. Three Archaic sacred buildings of Sicilian Naxos are used to demonstrate different approaches to recording the remains and reconstructing their architectural features. This work reflects changes in digital strategies over the past ten years. Tempietto H is a small shrine located outside the city’s boundaries and the site is currently inaccessible, so its reconstruction is based on excavation documentation and roof terracottas. The visible half of Tempietto C was documented using three-dimensional line-drawing with total stations and photogrammetry; the back-filled south-western part was surveyed with ground penetrating radar. Temple B is the largest sacred structure in Naxos. A geophysical survey gives new data on the eastern extent of the sanctuary. The area has been recorded with handheld and aerial photography to create a three-dimensional model of the sanctuary. A new orthogonal grid of the city was established circa 470 BCE and a rectangular base was placed in the south-east corner of every crossroad. These bases were the starting point for the plan, and their interpretation as altars converts the entire urban plan into a sacred landscape.
Highlights
Naxos was the earliest Greek settlement on Sicily and it is located on the east coast, south of Messina
The visible half of Tempietto C was documented using three-dimensional line-drawing with total stations and photogrammetry; the back-filled south-western part was surveyed with ground penetrating radar
The combination of three-dimensional reflectorless-laser total station drawing with georeferenced photogrammetry has been recently discussed using case studies from fieldwork projects conducted by the Finnish Institute at Athens, including the shipshed complex at Naxos (Pakkanen, 2018)
Summary
Naxos was the earliest Greek settlement on Sicily (founded 734/3; all dates in the paper are BCE) and it is located on the east coast, south of Messina. The upheavals of the fifth century are evident in archaeological material from the area, as Archaic buildings were systematically destroyed when the new orthogonal plan was established in the early Classical period (on the identification of the two superimposed urban layouts, see Pelagatti, 1981; for a recent review of the textual sources and archaeological evidence, see Lentini, Blackman, & Pakkanen, 2013). A high-accuracy total station survey of the excavated sectors currently located inside the archaeological park has been conducted as part of the project Urban Landscape of Naxos in Sicily in 2012–17 The city’s buildings were constructed using mudbrick, and with their roofs no longer maintained and their tiles largely recycled, their walls dissolved quickly This outcome occurred with both private houses and monumental architecture. The digital reconstructions presented in this paper are one part of an effort in the past ten years to make a visit to the first Greek settlement on Sicily more informative
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