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Syracuse

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Corinthian colony and principal port founded traditionally c 734 BC on the east coast of Sicily. The earliest occupation was on the island of Ortygia; later settlement was on the mainland in the Achradina area. Early Palaeolithic material occurs in the Great Harbor. Syracuse was the leader of Greek cities in Sicily and had many struggles with Athens and Carthage, becoming capital of Roman Sicily in the 3rd century BC. Siding with Hannibal in the Second Punic War was a mistake which led to a long siege by Rome. In the early Christian era, Syracuse became something of a religious center, and there are extensive catacombs. From the 5th century onward, the city's civilization disintegrated under the general chaos of the western empire. Surviving remains include the archaic Doric temples of Zeus and Apollo, Temple of Athena, the Greek theater, and a 3rd-century AD amphitheater. Evidence also survives for an extensive fortification system of Epipolae, a triangular-plan rocky plateau which was unified with the city in some 27 km of walling; the Fort of Euryalos was at the highest point.

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Cassibile

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age settlement and cemetery containing 2,000 rock-cut chamber tombs near Syracuse in southeast Sicily. It is the type site of a Late Bronze Age phase -- Pantalica II -- of the early 1st millennium BC. The Pantalica culture was characterized by large urban settlements. Artifacts include a distinctive buff painted ware with plume or 'feather' motifs, c 1250-1000 BC, and a number of typical bronze types, including stilted and thick-arc fibulae and shaft-hole axes.

Castelluccio

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Bronze Age settlement and cemetery of rock-cut tombs near Syracuse, Sicily. Excavated by Orsi in 1891-1892, the cemetery contained several hundred tombs used for collective burial and one tomb had a carved facade and several were closed by slabs with carved double spirals. The characteristic pottery was a buff ware painted with black or green lines and designs. Pottery shapes included splay-necked cups and pedestaled bowls. There were also bossed bone plaques, showing connections with the Aegean world well before 2000 BC.

Corinth

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Greece, located where the Peloponnese meets the isthmus that connects it to the Greek mainland. The city has an exceptionally high acropolis on Acronocorinth Hill and profited from having ports on both the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs. The site was occupied from before 3000 BC, but its history is obscure until the early 8th century BC, when the city-state of Corinth began to develop as a commercial center. There is evidence of a Neolithic and an Early Bronze Age settlement at Corinth, both of considerable size. There is little evidence of Mycenaean settlement, however, and the next major settlement belonged to the Dark Age, c late 10th century BC. Corinth was a very important city throughout the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods. Corinth's political influence was increased through territorial expansion in the vicinity, and by the late 8th century it had secured control of the isthmus. The Corinthians established colonies at Corcyra and Syracuse, later making them dominant in trade with the western Mediterranean. From c 720-570 BC, Corinthian painted vases in the black-figure technique (which the Corinthians invented) were exported all over the Greek world. Workshops dating to this period have been excavated in the potters' quarter at Corinth, producing both pottery and terracottas. Corinthian pottery provides the most useful dating method available to archaeologists studying this period. Northwest of the agora stand seven Doric columns, which are the remains of the Temple of Apollo (c 550 BC). Callimachus is said to have invented the Corinthian column capital here c 450-425 BC. Corinth was involved in most of Greece's political struggles and in 146 BC was destroyed by the Roman general Lucius Mummius. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar reestablished Corinth as a Roman colony. Many of the visible remains date from the classical Greek and especially the early Roman periods, including a Roman agora (marketplace), the Odeon, the Pirene fountain, the Glauke fountain, temples, villas, baths, pottery factory, gymnasium, basilica, theater, and an amphitheater. Parts of the classical fortifications on the acropolis survive. In the later medieval period it then passed from Frankish to Venetian and eventually to Turkish hands. Substantial buildings from all these periods have been found in excavations since 1896. Modern Corinth was founded in 1858, 3 miles north of the ancient town, after an earthquake leveled the latter.

Gela

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A colony in southern Sicily founded by Cretan and Rhodian colonists c 688 BC, whose inhabitants founded Acragas (now Agrigento) in c 581 BC. Gela was prosperous under the tyrant Hippocrates of Gela (498-491 BC), and his powerful successor, Gelon, who transferred his capital and half of the Gela population to Syracuse in 482 BC. Gela was refounded in 466 BC, but it was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 405 BC and abandoned by order of Dionysius I the Elder of Syracuse. It was refounded in the 4th century and again in 1233 by Frederick II, known as Terranova di Sicilia until 1928.

Motya

SYNONYM: modern San Pantaleo
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the three principal centers of Carthaginian Sicily (the other two were at Panorums (Palermo) and Soloeis (Soluntum). It was a Phoenician harbor town on a tiny island off the extreme west of Sicily. The settlement was founded in the 8th century BC and was joined to the mainland by a causeway. Excavations have revealed stretches of walls with gates and towers, and artificial dock (cothon), a temple, a sanctuary (tophet), houses, and cemeteries. Much Greek pottery has also been found at Motya. After the destruction of the city by Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse in 397 BC, the inhabitants left to colonize nearby Lilybaeum.

Naxos (Sicily)

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The earliest Greek colony in Sicily, founded by Chalcidians under Theocles (Thucles) about 734 BC. It lay on the east coast, south of Tauromenium, on what is now Cape Schisò. The adoption of the name of Naxos, after the island in the Aegean Sea, indicates there were Naxians among its founders. It soon founded other colonies at Leontini and Catana. After 461 BC, Naxos was in opposition to Syracuse, allied with Leontini (427) and Athens (415). In 403 BC, it was destroyed by Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, and its territory given to the Sicels. Its Greek exiles at last found refuge in 358 at Tauromenium. Scanty traces of its walls are to be seen; there is evidence in the area for Neolithic huts, Bronze Age settlement, and a sanctuary area assigned to Aphrodite. Pottery is often distinctive in style, with Euboean and Cycladic reminiscences, and a potters' quarter (vicinity of Colle Salluzzo) with kilns, depositories, and antefix molds. Naxos coins (6th-5th centuries BC) carry a bearded Dioynysus with ivy, vine, and grape decoration, while later examples have his companion in revelry, Sinenus, who also on the local terra-cotta antefixes.

Pantalica

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age site inland from Syracuse in southeast Sicily, occupied c 13th-8th centuries BC. The 5,000 rock-cut tombs which honeycomb the hillside around have yielded great quantities of material. Pottery and metal goods from the tombs indicate trading contacts with both mainland Italy and the Aegean. The characteristic local pottery is wheelmade, red-slipped, and burnished. Four phases run from contemporary with Late Mycenaean c 1200 BC to well after the first Greek colonies formed in the 8th century BC. At least one public building has been exposed: a large stone built structure described as an anaktoron or palace.

Sicilian pottery

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: South Italian pottery using the red-figured technique of the late 5th century BC. Production centers included Syracuse, Himera, and Centuripe.

Sicily

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest island in the Mediterranean Sea with settlement from 10,000 years ago. It was colonized by the Greeks between 8th-6th centuries BC, with cities such as Syracuse, Leontini, Naxos, Megara, Agragas, and Selinus. At the coming of the Greeks, three peoples occupied Sicily: in the east the Siculi, or Sicels, who gave their name to the island but were reputed to be latecomers from Italy; to the west of the Gelas River, the Sicani; and in the extreme west the Elymians, a people of Trojan origin with their chief centers at Segesta and at Eryx (Erice). Sicily came into conflict with the Phoenician colony of Carthage early on and in the battle at Himera in 480 BC, the Syracusan fleet (Syracuse was Sicily's capital) beat the Carthaginians. Sicily eventually fell under the control of Romans, becoming the first Roman province, in 227 BC.

Stentinello

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic ditched village site Syracuse in Sicily, the type site of the Sicilian version of impressed ware, which survives later than elsewhere. Round-based dishes and necked jars have elaborate impressed and, distinctively, intricate stamped designs and multiple excised chevrons filled with white inlay. On some, a pair of stamped lozenges are combined with an applied knob near the lip to suggest a human face. The dates are c 5600-4400 BC.

Thapsos

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Site of a Middle Bronze Age cemetery near Syracuse, Sicily, of nearly 400 rock-cut tombs with dromos entrances. Most have a vertical shaft and were used for collective inhumations. It is the type site of the Thapsos culture, characterized by pottery, bronze swords and daggers, and Mycenaean imports of pottery and faience beads. The local ware has large cups and vases, often on high pedestals and with handles, with decoration in chevrons and cordons. The material is dated c 1400-1200 BC. Thapsos is a promontory but was once an island. The Thapsos culture follows the Castelluccio culture and is succeeded by the Pantalica culture in the same area.