RICERCA ITALIANA     

Ethnic interaction and cohabitation, clashes and contacts of cultures in Sicily and Magna Graecia

Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

Abstract

The U.R. proposes a new basis for the study of the populations and cultures of ancient Sicily, placing the accent not so much on the individual components (Greeks, Phoenicians, Sicels, Sicans, Elymi, Campanians, Romans) but rather on their concrete relations and forms of cohabitation or tension, through epigraphic and archeological documents that attest to their copresence and interrelations. We will thus proceed to re-examine the already-identified literary and epigraphic documentation, integrating it with new epigraphic and archeological data acquired through investigations currently in progress and planned, in particular excavations conducted by the Laboratory of History, Archeology and Topography of the Ancient World in western Sicily (Segesta, Entella) and lexicographic research in progress at the Ancient Languages Computer Laboratory (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa). We will give particular attention to the onomasticon. The fundamental hypothesis is the reconsideration of traditional views of ancient Sicilian history (either as a continuity of an almost atemporal “Sicilian element”, or as a continual overlaying of foreign invasions and dominions), views that are in some way mirror-like. Concrete analysis of texts, documents and monuments seems to indicate a continual penetration of different ethnic and cultural elements and a progressive tendency towards cultural unification from a Hellenic point of view, even in the first centuries of Roman domination. The first >>>

Principal Investigator

Carmine Ampolo Scuola Normale Superiore di PISA

Research Objectives

- To gather documentation related to the theme, augmenting it with field research (for ex., Segesta, Entella), analyze it in its totality and propose a general interpretation of forms of co-habitation and conflict among peoples and cultures in Sicily and Magna Graecia.
- Upon completion of research, to develop a final synthesis for publication.

First Results

We expect to be able to publish the results of the individual units immediately after completion of research. The documentation, gathered and analyzed in a new way, should provide a picture of the forms of co-habitation and conflict in the ancient West (Sicily and magna Graecia) that goes beyond the traditional view (indicated in the “State of the Art”) and demonstrate the long duration of ethnic and cultural interrelations and co-habitation in Sicily and Magna Graecia during the classical age.
The results will constitute an interpretive model that will be applicable to other environments and historical periods.

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

In recent decades, the study of local (“indigenous”) populations of Sicily and Southern Italy has made great progress, from both the point of view of epigraphic and archeological documentation and with regard to the gathering of literary sources (for example, for the Brettii), as well as in terms of the attention historians have given to local components and their relationships with Greek colonists and other presences (such as the Phoenicians and Italics in
Sicily, etc.). Thus the study of the “colonizers” has been justly balanced with that of the “colonized”; and so-called “barbarization” and “de-colonization” have also been
studied (Asheri).

On the other hand, concrete forms of co-habitation and conflict among peoples pertaining to different ethnic groups have not been studied in a satisfactory way. The documentation – in particular epigraphic documentation, but more in general, parts of literary sources and archeological evidence – demonstrates the simultaneous presence of people and groups of
different origins in the entire area under consideration, both in Greek and Phoenician cities and among local populations. Immigration and two-way movements of individuals and groups merit re-examination; the increasingly-evident expansion of Italiac peoples in Magna Graecia and in Sicily as well, accompanied phenomena of cultural and political interaction, clearly indicated by new documents, alongside forms of cultural or political persistence or >>>