Palermo (Sicilia). Contesti altomedievali dagli scavi urbani, dati archeologici e associazioni ceramiche

Abstract

In the last ten years, as part of the protection activities carried out by the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, several interventions have contributed to the knowledge of the medieval phase of the city of Palermo; here we will focus in particular on some early medieval contexts brought to light in the heart of the ancient city that document in particular the material culture in the eighth century, still little known. In the first case, the most important, it is an excavation conducted in 2017 at the restoration site of the ancient Palazzo Galletti in Santamarina, built in the Middle Ages near the northern slope of the Punic fortification, where it was highlighted a large drainage ditch dug in the seat of one of the main roads eastwest of the Punic-Roman city, at a time when the road, used continuously since the fourth century BC, was no longer in use. The ceramic materials (including amphorae, cooking pots, oil lamps, a fragment of ¿pietra ollare¿), found together with a bronze Byzantine coin, allow us to date the construction of the pit during the eighth century and return an interesting association of findings in a closed context, of which there will be an essential repertoire. These findings will be compared with the materials found in two other urban contexts excavated in 2011, which also document a chronological horizon related to the eighth century or slightly wider, the first emerged in the site of the Palazzetto Artale near Piazza Settangeli, in the western part of the ancient city, the second in Piazza Bologni, where during the construction of the new sewerage system was intercepted a discharge of materials of the Byzantine era.