The Rural Settlement of Contrada Castro (Sicily) between Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

In 2015, the University of Palermo, the Soprintendenza BB.CC.AA. of Palermo, and the private biofarm Bona Furtuna LLC formed a fruitful collaboration within the Harvesting Memories Project, which focuses on the study of long-term landscape transformations as a result of the diachronic interaction between socioeconomic human patterns and environmental and ecological trends. As part of a holistic vision of landscape conservation connected to 100 percent organic farming activities, a research program was developed that sought to understand the historical and ecological dynamics of a sector of the Sicani Mountains located in the southern part of the municipality of Corleone in the province of Palermo. The project uses an interdisciplinary approach that involves historical, archaeological, botanical, paleo-environmental studies and the use of GIS and remote sensing tools. The long occupation of this rural district has been documented by an archaeological survey that lead to the identification and mapping of different areas with human occupation from protohistory to the modern age. This survey identified a settlement with high archaeological potential located in the hilltop plateau of Contrada Castro where archaeological excavation campaigns have been carried out since 2017. The excavations have confirmed the long occupation of the hill that began with an inhabited area from the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE and a reoccupation during the Early Middle Ages, characterized by Contrada Castro (Sicily) between Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages 241 two macro phases between the late eighth–ninth and the tenth–eleventh centuries CE, the phase of the complex transition between the Byzantine and Islamic periods