Forme di aggregazione a Himera alla fine del v secolo a.C. : il caso dell'Isolato XII : con un'appendice di Cecilia Cittadini

Abstract

In this paper, the author presents the functional analysis of a house of Himera. The house, located in the Block XII of the plateau of Himera, was excavated in the 1970s by the Istituto di Archeologia dell’Università degli Studi di Palermo. Two houses were characterized by a certain richness of furnishings, consisting of abundant colonial and imported ceramic material, as well as bronze and marble furnishings. The research was concentrated in the Casa I Nord of the “Isolato XII”, from which all the materials were analyzed. Although in the eastern part of the house the archaeological contexts had been damaged by plough ing, a study of the finds allowed a functional reading of the building, in which there were a piece connected to the preparation and conservation of food, the courtyard and a compartment intended for the reception of guests. Precisely this last compartment provided a considerable amount of table vases, two marble and figured vases that hint at erotic and prenuptial themes. The context of this last room, as well as the architectural and planimetric characteristics of the house, prompted the author to read the building as an occasional location for collective activities. The carrying out of community rites within the oikos, today confirmed by numerous archaeological finds in different poleis, once again nudges the scientific debate towards the abandonment of the opposing categories of “sacred / profane”, “public / private”, “civic /individual”, to the advantage of a more nuanced interpretation of the archaeological context, firmly an chored to the archaeological data.