Abstract
AbstractThe relationship between Sicily and the eastern Mediterranean – namely Aegean, Cyprus and the Levant – represents one of the most intriguing facets of the prehistory of the island. The frequent and periodical contact with foreign cultures were a trigger for a gradual process of socio-political evolution of the indigenous community. Such relationship, already in inception during the Neolithic and the Copper Age, grew into a cultural phenomenon ruled by complex dynamics and multiple variables that ranged from the Mid-3rd to the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. In over 1,500 years, a very large quantity of Aegean and Levantine type materials have been identified in Sicily alongside with example of unusual local material culture traditionally interpreted as resulting from external influence. To summarize all the evidence during such long period and critically address it in order to attempt historical reconstructions is a Herculean labor.Twenty years after Sebastiano Tusa embraced this challenge for the first time, this paper takes stock on two decades of new discoveries and research reassessing a vast amount of literature, mostly published in Italian and in regional journals, while also address the outcomes of new archaeometric studies. The in-depth survey offers a new perspective of general trends in this East-West relationship which conditioned the subsequent events of the Greek and Phoenician colonization of Sicily.
Highlights
The earliest contacts between Sicily and the Aegean dates to the very end of the Neolithic period and the beginning of the Copper Age, when elementary metalworking practices gradually emerged alongside the circulation of artefacts with symbolic value, such as stone idols, and influences on the local pottery production
While more remarkable is the evidence of the funerary context, where we find the first example of built tholos tombs in the Bagni di San Calogero at Lipari, which strongly suggest a more permanent presence of skilled Aegean people
The emergence of metallurgy during Middle Bronze Age Sicily was definitely triggered by interaction with Aegean people, who for the first time introduced to the island raw materials as attested by the remarkable presence of the typical Mycenaean oxhide copper ingots (Sabatini, 2016)
Summary
The earliest contacts between Sicily and the Aegean dates to the very end of the Neolithic period and the beginning of the Copper Age, when elementary metalworking practices gradually emerged alongside the circulation of artefacts with symbolic value, such as stone idols, and influences on the local pottery production. During the last two decades new excavations and studies, revisions of old context and innovative archaeometric analyses brought out novel evidence which has changed partly the terms of the problem and offered new perspectives This contribution attempts to sum up the nature of the contacts between Sicily and the Aegean through the main phases that marked the Aegean prehistory, Late Helladic I–II (the formative period of the Mycenaean civilization), Late Helladic IIIA–IIIB (the Mycenaean heyday), and Late Helladic IIIC (the collapse of Mycenaean palatial system), building on the valuable heritage left behind by Sebastiano Tusa. Throughout the text terms like “Aegean type”, “Mycenaean type”, “Late Helladic type”, “Cypriote type” and “Levantine type” will be used, out of abundance of caution, with respect to pottery resembling Aegean, Mycenaean, Late Helladic Cypriote and Levantine prototypes found in Sicily, as their true nature, imports or local imitations, has not been determined via specific archaeometry analyses
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