Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SICTRANSIT (THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF REGIME CHANGE: SICILY IN TRANSITION)

Teaser

Sicily in transition investigates and explains the experience of ordinary people during changes in government. The project focuses on Sicily between the 6th and 13th century, during which time power changed hands from Byzantine, to Arab to Norman to Swabian authorities, the...

Summary

Sicily in transition investigates and explains the experience of ordinary people during changes in government. The project focuses on Sicily between the 6th and 13th century, during which time power changed hands from Byzantine, to Arab to Norman to Swabian authorities, the languages from Latin to Greek to Arabic to French and the religion from Greek Orthodox to Sunni Muslim to Shi’ite Muslim to Roman Catholic.

Contemporary society has much to learn from the experience, both positive and negative, of Sicilian farmers, artisans, merchants and their families during these episodes of regime change and realignment, in which lordship, kinship, spirituality and wealth creation were variously pre-eminent.

Our objectives are to demonstrate how social structure, settlement, agriculture, trade and demography changed using the methods of archaeology, bioarchaeology and biomolecular archaeology, and so to draw general lessons on which factors were most significant in the promotion of well-being, tolerance or strife.

Work performed

Research in the field in three seasons (2016, 2017, 2018) has focused on obtaining a historical sequence from excavation, survey and the study of extant buildings at the site of Castronovo di Sicilia (PA), where archaeological remains survive from the whole period addressed by our research. Three principal sites have been investigated: on Monte Kassar the walls of the Byzantine fortress have been recorded and excavation has revealed steps to the parapet, a ‘soldiers house’ built up against the interior of the wall and a headquarters building of the 8/9th century, together with a church built on the hill in the 13th century (FIG 1). At Colle San Vitale detailed recording of the monuments combined with excavation has established that this site began as a Norman castle in the 12th century (FIG 2). Excavation and survey at Casale San Pietro has revealed a sequence of occupation from the 3rd to the 13th century, with a major upsurge in production and wealth in the 10/11th century owed to the Kalbid (Islamic) regime (FIG 3). Castronovo has justified its choice as a ‘barometer’ of Sicilian settlement, production and trade in the early medieval period.

Research in Laboratory at Lecce has identified plants new to Europe introduced by the Arabs, and developed new methods of identifying poorly preserved taxa

Research in the laboratory at Rome has detailed 700 years of the ceramic narrative for Sicily as a whole and is mapping the distribution of imports and exports - and thus the trade links through time - using the fabric of transport containers (amphorae). (FIG 4)

Researchers at BioArCh in York have obtained their first validated results on the contents of amphorae and of cooking pots using organic residue analysis. The first PhD relating to sictransit is nearing completing (on the use of animals). York researchers have successfully extracted samples for biomolecular analysis taken from 150 individuals buried in 16 Sicilian cemeteries, and are preparing protocols to report their origins, ancestry, mobility and diet (from aDNA, stable isotope analysis).

Final results

Methodological progress has been made on ways of detecting plants, the previous contents of cooking pots, the contents of amphorae, the diet as indicated by stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen and likely origins of people as indicated by aDNA. Publication of these advances will follow the completion of the relevant doctoral and post doctoral work.

Results expected by the end of the project include a description of a sequence of seven centuries of settlement and agricultural production and diet, of the patterns of internal and external trade and of demography including mobility and identity as defined by place of origin, ethnicity and religion. This provides the basic material to construct the story of the ‘people without history’ as their governing regime changed from Christian Byzantine to Islamic Arab and Berber, to Christian Norman and Swabian – the objectives of the project.

Website & more info

More info: http://sicilyintransition.org.