Contatto culturale e interrelazioni tra Greci e indigeni nel territorio imerese.

Abstract

The aim of this work is to discuss interrelations and cultural contacts between the Greek colonists of Himera and the native peoples and communities in the chora of the colony, mainly going up the three valleys of the Northern Imera, Torto and San Leonardo rivers and the hilly watershed area between the Northern Imera and the Southern Imera River. The intensive and systematic survey of all these areas allowed us to connect settlements with their surrounding areas and to identify a sequence of districts (Serra di Puccia, Terravecchia-Tutusino on the Imera; Mura Pregne, Colle Madore on the Torto; Cozzo Sannita, Pizzo Pipitone on the San Leonardo river), identified not only on geomorphologic and landscape features, but also in connection with indigenous population distribution. This different landscape perception allows us to drop out the notion of “inland penetration” by the colonists, meant as a gradual growth of territorial power, associated to an acculturation policy (“hellenization”) of the native populations, and consequently to avoid the centre-periphery approach. GIS can be of the greatest utility in this new perception, to understand as the past communities build up over time their cultural landscape, not only the landscape of settlement, but also the sacred landscape and the landscape of power. Intervisibility analyses help us to reconstruct land control systems, settlement hierarchies and relationships between settlements and rural sanctuaries. The sacred landscape also can be investigated analyzing relationships, within every district, among settlements and rural sanctuaries and among the rural sanctuaries themselves. Artifacts can be viewed as proof of trades or people movement, but also as cultural media between different communities. Cultural contacts can be reconstructed by the study of refunctionalization processes in architecture and the transmission of craft techniques, as the building at Colle Madore of a sacellum of Greek type testifies.