Belvedere, Oscar
Agrigento: Archaeology of an Ancient City. Urban Form, Sacred and Civil Spaces, Productions, Territory: Panel 8.2
The archaeological research in Agrigento has undergone a new and important impulse thanks to a new collaboration between the Archaeological Park "Valley of the Temples" and many Italian and European universities, who have worked side by side on shared projects and excavations. This volume aims to be a synthesis of the most recent research carried out in the various sectors of the ancient city, but also a testimony of a correct way of proceeding, in which different universities and management, protection and research structures actively collaborate in the search for a common vision of such an important city of Antiquity as Agrigento, which, until a few years ago was isolated and little known in the research community, except for the famous Hill of the Temples. Agrigento now displays an unprecedented richness in archaeological research: the various aspects of the social, architectural and economic life of the ancient city now emerge with greater clarity, as well as the urban spaces, its sanctuaries, housing estates, production sites, but also the agricultural management of the chora and the extra-urban territory in an overall vision of the city which, although still partly incomplete, produces one of the few complex syntheses of the life of a city in ancient Sicily.
The Ancient City and Nature's Economy in Magna Graecia and Sicily: Panel 2.1
The panel offered archaeological landscape studies and paleoenvironmental reconstructions, thus shedding light on human-environment interactions. Archaeological research combined with Earth Sciences made different patterns of these interactions visible at several sites in Magna Graecia and Sicily.
Approaches combined archaeological methods with Geoarchaeology, Palynology, Zooarchaeology, and Climate History. The case studies covered a long period, reaching back to the early phases of Greek settlement on Sicily. Moreover, shifts in settlement dynamics between Roman and Greek times were observed and hypotheses created by taking a paleoenvironmental perspective. At the same time, economic and social implications and their effects on the data were considered. Examples originated from survey archaeology as well as from samples gained during excavations.
