Textile Activity and Cultural Identity in Sicily Between the Late Bronze Age and Archaic Period

Gabriella Longhitano

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789256000
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Archéologie

Clothing was an essential part of material culture in ancient societies both as a form of body protection and as house equipment. Besides a practical function, textiles played a crucial role in communicating various aspects of social and personal identity. Based largely on the analysis of textile tools, this book is intended to be the first systematic attempt at reconstructing textile culture in ancient Sicily. Textile implements represent the most abundant category of evidence for textile activity in Sicily and in this book they are used as a means to explore the social dynamics within cultural interactions in the final Bronze–Iron Age and Archaic Sicily. The book begins with an overview of the cultural complexity of communities in Sicily and the Aeolian islands, focusing on two crucial periods of Sicilian history, which are characterised by intense movements of peoples from the Italian peninsula and the establishment of Greek and Phoenician settlements. Through the investigation of textile tools, the book discusses several key aspects, including technological features of textile technology and production, knowledge transfer, networks of weavers, as well as the social significance of textile activity. By employing an interdisciplinary perspective, this book is important not only for textile specialists but also for scholars and students dealing with culturally hybrid frameworks of ancient Sicily and provides a springboard for future studies on textile culture and cultural interactions in the ancient world.

Chapter 1

Geographical, chronological and cultural framework

Despite its proximity to the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, culturally and chronologically, developed distinctively from the mainland. However, Sicilian prehistory and history cannot be understood without taking into account its links with continental Italy and the Central Mediterranean. Before starting the discussion on textile production in Sicily, a short introduction into Sicilian chronology and archaeological cultures is in order. The following pages do not mean to provide a comprehensive overview, but instead set out the chronological and cultural stages for investigating textile production. The cultural horizons (facies in Italian terminology) will be briefly described and the emphasis will be placed on two crucial periods of Sicilian archaeology characterised by intense movement of peoples. Finally, a brief overview of the most recent theories on cultural encounters will be provided to set out an appropriate theoretical framework for approaching the analysis of textile tools within the wider scenario of cultural contacts.

Geographical context

Sicily is the largest Mediterranean island, separated from the Italian mainland by only the 3 km Strait of Messina. Not far from both the north-eastern tip of Sicily and the west coast of Calabria, the Aeolian archipelago lies off the north-eastern end of the Tyrrhenian Sea (Map 1.1). The position and resources of Sicily and the Aeolian islands had an important impact on their socio-cultural development over the centuries. During the 15th–13th centuries BC, they were part of a wider network of maritime connections, which tied them to the rest of the Mediterranean. In the Sicilian Middle Bronze Age (c. 1490/1460–1270 BC1), Sicily and the Aeolian islands were characterised by a largely homogeneous culture, known as the Thapsos-Milazzese culture, which differed from the one on the Italian Peninsula. This cultural horizon has also been documented at Ustica, Pantelleria and on the Poro promontory of the Calabrian coast.2 This period also bore witness to the height of Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean interaction with local Sicilian and Aeolian communities.3 During the 13th century BC, this internal cultural homogeneity was broken into local territorial entities with distinct types of material culture and different social and political organisational structures. As a result, the islands lost their function as key players in the wider spectrum of Bronze Age Mediterranean interactions. The end of the Bronze Age represented a change in the direction of contacts and a shift from the Eastern to the Western Mediterranean, in which the link with the Italian Peninsula was most relevant.4

Map 1.1: Map of Sicily with main sites mentioned in Chapter. 1: Lipari; 2: Milazzo; 3: Punta Castelluzzo; 4: Metapiccola – Leontinoi; 5: Thapsos; 6: Pantalica; 7: Cozzo del Pantano; 8: Cassibile; 9: Finocchito; 10: Molino della Badia-Madonna del Piano; 11:Caltagirone; 12: The Cittadella hill; 13: Dessueri; 14: Sabucina; 15: Cannatello; 16: Sant’Angelo Muxaro; 17: Scirinda; 18: Mokarta; 19: Motya;20: Panormos; 21: Solunto; 22: Himera; 23: Zancle; 24: Naxos; 25: Katane; 26: Megara Hyblaea; 27: Syracuse; 28: Akrai; 29: Casmene; 30: Camarina; 31: Gela; 32:Akragas; 33: Selinous; 34: Paternò; 35: Centuripe; 36: Cozzo della Tignusa; 37: Pozzo di Gotto; 38: Calascibetta; 39: Noto Antica; 40: Avola.

Chronological and cultural context

The chronological framework for this study encompasses the period between the 13th and the 5th centuries BC. The chronology of Sicilian cultures is mostly based on relative dating, as the application of dendrochronological and radiometric methods is still rare. The massive work of summarising Sicilian chronology by Bernabò Brea5 still remains essentially valid, even though the updating through new discoveries and debates on chronological sequences is still under way.6 The chronology followed here is presented in Table 1.1.

The Sicilian chronological sequences for the end of the Bronze Age and Iron Age are mainly based on Pantalica culture, while the Aeolian islands’ sequences are based on Ausonian culture and both differ from the Italian subdivision.7 More recently, the tendency of adopting the Italian peninsular terminology has grown, especially for those sites that appear to show many features in common with the Italian counterparts in the same periods, even though the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age terminology in the Italian Peninsula is not consistent.8 In this work, the period terminology refers to the Sicilian one.

Table 1.1: A simplified comparative chronology and period terminology for Italian Peninsula and Sicily between the 13th to 5th centuries BC (elaborated after Leighton 2019, tab. 7.1).

Years BC	Italian terminology	Sicilian terminology
1450–1270	Middle Bronze Age	Middle Bronze Age (Thapsos/Milazzese)
1270–1150	Recent Bronze Age	Late Bronze Age: Pantalica I (or Pantalica North) & Ausonian I
1150–1100	Final Bronze Age 1	Final Bronze Age: Pantalica II (or Cassibile) & Ausonian II
1100–1050	Final Bronze Age 2
1050–950/900	Final Bronze Age 3
950/900–850	Early Iron Age 1	Pantalica III (or Pantalica South)
850–750	Early Iron Age 2
750–650	Second Iron Age	Finocchito
650–600	Orientalising or proto-Archaic period	Licodia Eubea
600–475/450	Archaic

This situation is made more confusing as for a long time much of the scholarship sought correspondence between written sources and archaeological evidence.9 This practice has had a major impact on the archaeological debate and in some cases has distracted some archaeologists from their aims. In particular, it was common for scholars to explain the change in material culture and practices by accepting the references to invasions and migrations recorded by much later ancient authors.10 However, many scholars have highlighted the difficulties inherent in the attempt to match early archaeological evidence with ethnic or tribal labels/epithets provided by later Greek authors, since this almost certainly produces misleading results.11 In particular, Albanese Procelli12 has pointed out that, while the term Ausonian might be used to indicate the abrupt change of material culture at Lipari and in north-eastern Sicily, it cannot indicate the later periodic arrival of groups in Sicily, whose ethnicities are blurry in the archaeological record. As a whole, the distinction between the inhabitants of Sicily before the Greek colonisation – as recorded by ancient authors – should be considered fluid as the material culture does not show distinct ethnic differentiations.13 Thus, the traditional cultural designations will only be used throughout the book conventionally to indicate common material culture backgrounds (mainly pottery, metals and architecture), broadly shared among a number of sites.

In Italian chronology, the Iron Age succeeds the Final Bronze Age. It is dated between 950/900 BC to 650 BC14 and is further divided into two sub-phases, the Early (I–II) and the Second Iron Age (prima e seconda età del Ferro). This term is merely conventional since there is not a clear or precise break coinciding with the spread of iron-working. In Sicilian terminology, the Iron Age follows the Pantalica...