Back to Top

Journal of archaeology and ancient architecture

Tag Archives: Agrigentum

La krene nell’area del teatro di Agrigento: dati preliminari

Authors: L.M. Caliò, A. Fino, G.M. Gerogiannis

Download article as .pdf: La krene nell’area del teatro di Agrigento: dati preliminari

 

This paper reports the preliminary results of the research carried out west of the theater area of Agrigentum, with the aim of understanding and specifying the boundaries of the large public space in which the complex insists. The excavations of this sector, in fact, stand in continuity with those of the theater, constituting almost an appendix. The area, excavated since 2017, has returned over the years an intricate stratigraphy of overlapping structures that in 2022 led to the recognition of a krene in the lowest levels, the making of could be framed as part of the Teron construction activity. The importance of the discovery stands in the fact that at the complex water management system, consisting of galleries, hypogea and fine catchment systems, only a monumental fountain is known until now in the entire extention of the ancient city at the so-called Santuario Rupestre in S. Biagio. The achievements, moreover, are fueling a renewed interest in issues related to the water archaeology and particularly how it was experienced in daily life even in the urban and social organization of ancient cities.

Il Santuario ellenistico romano di Agrigento: ragioni, principi e metodi per una proposta di anastilosi

Author: V. Santoro

download article as .pdf: Il Santuario ellenistico romano di Agrigento: ragioni, principi e metodi per una proposta di anastilosi

Since 1988, systematic archaeological excavations directed by Ernesto De Miro were carried out in the area located north of Poggio di San Nicola, situated in the center of the ancient city of Agrigentum. During these researches, implemented until 2005-2006, a porched square dominated by a temple was brought to light. The team of the Department of Civil Engineering Sciences and Architecture (DICAR) of the Polytechnic of Bari, in accordance with the Parco Archeologico e Paesaggistico della Valle dei Templi, starting from 2012, initiated a critical revision of the previous investigations concerning the study of the monumental areas next to the upper agora of Agrigentum, also with the aim of enhancing them. The new researches, that contributed to clarify the architectural arrangement and the several phases of the porched complex North of the agora, provided useful data for the proposal of an anastylosis for a portion of the northern porch, to be coordinated by author of the present paper. This contribution aims to stress the interdisciplinary methodology that, from the archaeological excavation, led, on scientific and philological bases, to propose a project for an overall reconstruction to enhance a monument and an area whose original ancient centrality is going to be reestablished again in the current guided tours of the Parco.

La tarda antichità nell’entroterra occidentale di Agrigento. Una proposta di lettura dell’assetto insediativo a partire dal Sistema Informativo Territoriale (SIT)

Autore: A. Pensallorto

scarica l’articolo in formato .pdf: La tarda antichità nell’entroterra occidentale di Agrigento. Una proposta di lettura dell’assetto insediativo a partire dal Sistema Informativo Territoriale (SIT)

The digitalisation and the analysis of data coming from the rural settlement of the western hinterland of Agrigento, show that settlement pattern is characterized by typical phenomena for the Late Antiquity: the exponential increase in the number of sites and their tendency to create system. This is particularly clear in those sectors with a greatest agricultural potential within the whole territory, such as the areas of Siculiana, Eraclea Minoa and Raffadali. The development of these large rural districts may be read as the symptom of a deep change in the ways and in the places of agricultural production. This phenomenon can be related to the socio-economic changes that were progressively triggered by the foundation of Constantinople and the conquest of Africa by Vandals.

La conservazione dei monumenti antichi in Sicilia. Il caso del de-restauro della fontana arcaica di Agrigento

scarica l’articolo in formato pdfLa conservazione dei monumenti antichi in Sicilia. Il caso del de-restauro della fontana arcaica di Agrigento

Continue Reading

.


santoroNotwithstanding a centuries-long tradition of conservation in Italy, the principal cause of degradation of Greek and Roman buildings is found principally in the lack of a standardised intervention methodology and in the use of inappropriate building materials, incompatible with the tectonics of the original building. In effect, from the 1920s until recently, restoration interventions with steel reinforcement bars and epoxy resins to buildings made originally of stone seem to have been carried out on the principal archaeological monuments throughout the Mediterranean area causing similar structural and formal damage, which is sometimes irreversible. The Italian position, different from the Greek one, even with increasingly frequent architectural emergencies, including building collapses, seems to offer only a glaring lack of preparation in methodology, procedure and technique in the proposing of solutions or long-term intervention programmes. Instead, there are temporary interventions, such as protective coverings or support scaffolding which, remaining in situ beyond their capacity for protection, have worsened the conservation status of the building, as has recently happened for the archaic fountain in Akragas. The partial de-restoration of the fountain reported in this paper is part of a critical close examination of the history of its restorations since its discovery, which has confirmed that inexact analyses and a succession of ineffective interventions have damaged the entire architectural setup, whose typological characteristics of construction require a full and definitive intervention.

La Fontana Arcaica di S. Biagio

scarica l’articolo in formato pdfLa Fontana Arcaica di S. Biagio

Continue Reading

.


finoThis paper aims to provide the first results of a new autoptical analysis on the structures of the archaic fountain in Agrigento, known as the Santuario rupestre of S. Biagio. The monumental system, located just outside the city-walls, on the north-eastern slopes of the Rupe Atenea, behind a rock face in which is developed an anthropic cave system, is made up mainly of two parts: the building of the western basins and, forehead to the east, a fenced yard. After the first investigations directed by Pirro Marconi in 1926, Giuseppe Cultrera, in 1932, unearthed the whole monumental complex. Since the discovery, the monument was subjected to several restoration works, some of which quite invasive, that determined a difficult reading of the architectural structure in its landscape. A new analysis on the structures has been done, in order to specify the architectural configuration during the life phases of the monument and to retrace the natural and anthropical processes that affected the site since its foundation. Moreover, it has been suggested a datation within the Hellenistic period, providing comparisons with the eastern Mediterranean world.