The Evidence

Indigenous Religious Activity in Central-West Sicily After 650 B CE

Signs of religious activity among indigenous sites increase starting around 650 BCE, roughly contemporary with the first generations of settlement of Phoeni­cians and Greeks in central and western Sicily.

Between 650 and 600 BCE, ten indigenous sites reserved spaces in their settlements for worship; importantly, none of these spaces were burial grounds. Open-air cult was typically practiced, and was characterized primarily by sacri­fice, drinking and eating, and occasionally by votive dedication. At least five of these sites (Polizzello, Sabucina, Caltanissetta, Palma di Montechiaro, and Mont­agnoli) also included built structures, a pattern that would become more promi­nent in the sixth century. Unlike houses of the time, which were usually rect­angular or elliptical, seventh-century buildings with evidence of other religious material correlates tended to be round. As such, they resembled, and probably deliberately evoked memories of, Bronze Age domestic architecture (cf. De Miro 1980-81, 561) and have received the label “hut-shrines” as a result. Other sites, however, built rectangular one- or two-room shrines stylistically similar to build­ings at Greek sites like Gela, Himera, and Selinous.

Recent scholarship has frequently discussed the architecture of these religious spaces, but less attention has been paid to other elements of religious practice as­sociated with them. This is one of the ways in which the organization of evidence according to a set of religious material correlates—the same set used to examine

Figure 3. Development of indigenous religious spaces in central-west Sicily, 650-400 BCE.

the “precolonial” evidence—can be productive. Over the course of the Archaic and early Classical periods, for instance, seventy new cult spaces appeared at different sites across central-western Sicily. Ranking the correlate categories at an aggregate level produces a tiered profile of religious worship among indigenous communi­ties after colonization. At the top, documented at just less than 75 percent of the spaces, was the use of specialized architecture and the strong natural associations of places where sacred areas developed, along with their tendency to be set apart or physically marked off from other areas. Below this level was the evidence for specific religious practices. Ritual deposition or treatment of items (votives) char­acterized 69 percent of the sacred areas; offerings of food and drink and the public display of wealth or status characterized 63 percent, and there was evidence for the heightening or inducing of emotions at 54 percent, mostly through the pres­ence of wine vessels.

A few sites illuminate these patterns more clearly. At Iron Age Sabucina, for example, ritual activity may have taken place at Hypogeum 1/83, a tomb-like structure going back to the Bronze Age and featuring a mixed assemblage of ma­terial both domestic and cultic in nature (Mollo Mezzena 1993; Guzzone 2006, 39-43), as well as at two other buildings (Building D and Hut 9) which appeared mostly residential, but had material corresponding to between one and three other religious correlates. Around 650 BCE, Sabucina overhauled its religious landscape. A sector just outside of one of the city gates was designated for ritual purposes, with activity centering on two hut-shrines (A and B), one of which featured a rectangular porch with Doric columns and was later decorated with architectural terracottas (De Miro 1980-1981, 561-66). Worshipers left items inside both structures, including a model of a hut-shrine that dated to the early sixth century and bronze belts decorated with anthropogenic images (Guzzone 2006, 73; Albanese Procelli 2003, 53-57). By the mid-sixth century, the people of Sabucina added a rectangular structure and two rock-cut buildings to that space, while also designating two new sacred areas, one inside and one outside the city walls. These new areas also featured a mixture of older and newer architectural styles, with the rectangular building receiving Geloan-style antefixes and the rock-cut structures echoing long-established building techniques at Sabucina.

A different example might be cited at Monte Saraceno. There is little evidence for Iron Age occupation of the site, but by the mid-seventh century, the group liv­ing there designated the acropolis for open-air cult (Calderone 1980-1981, 604).

Further west, variant patterns of development characterized different sites. At Colle Madore, south of Himera, for example, open-air cult marked by lots of drinking and animal eating in the seventh century BCE preceded the erection of an initial (probably wooden) round shrine on the acropolis, which was then re­placed with a more permanent round hut-shrine around 550 BCE and used espe­cially for cow, ovi-caprid, and deer sacrifice (Vassallo 1999, 60-61). Around the same time, however, the residents of Colle Madore also put up a narrow rectan­gular structure on the terrace just below the acropolis, marking its construction with a foundation deposit containing heirloom pottery, and using it (based on the material) both for leaving and manufacturing votives (Vassallo 1999, 67-71). All these areas, however, declined just before 500 BCE, when the site was aban­doned (Vassallo 1999, 73-74). Meanwhile, at Segesta, ritual activity flourished into the Hellenistic period. Little Iron Age material has emerged for “Elymian” Segesta, but the Grotta Vanella area may have been used for ritual activity as early as the seventh century based on pottery found there (De la Genière 1997, 1033-34). By the sixth century, the center of ritual activity must have shifted to the Contrada Mango area, which around 550 BCE received a massive Doric-style temple (Tusa 1957, 86; 1961, 35). The publications for this area are confusing, but the boundary and foundation walls make clear that it would have rivaled certain sanctuaries at Greek sites. Investment in glorifying the gods continued during the fifth century at Segesta, with the construction of the iconic Doric temple on the western hill (Mertens 1984).

These few examples flesh out the outline of postcolonization indigenous reli­gion in Sicily provided by the percentages described above. Neither numbers nor narratives, however, explain the significance of such changes; quantification is ultimately a method of condensing information, while narratives bring the mate­rial of individual sites closer. Concepts like extratextuality may be useful, then, in the sense that they help fill the gap between the two.