Neolithic settlement in the locality of Brucoli - Gisira
Denomination
Neolithic settlement; late antique necropolis; rock settlement of the Byzantine age. (A2.5).
Description
The presence of a Neolithic village on the peninsula is evidenced by a series of holes for poles identified on the western plateau overlooking the canal. At the NW end of the plateau, near a small beach formed by a bend in the river, two late-antique pit tombs dug into the rock are still visible. Other tombs appear to have been destroyed during the construction of the modern buildings. Also on the plateau, in the vicinity of the area where the holes for poles are located, stands the fifteenth-century castle, with a rectangular tower erected between 1462 and 1467, to which boundary bastions were added in the sixteenth century. Numerous caves of natural origin, structurally modified and adapted for funerary, residential and religious use, are present along the Porcaria valley. Recent explorations have revealed the existence inside most of them, of niches, votive shrines, graffiti and with Christian symbols. Some caves have evident traces of a residential use: dividing walls of the rooms, holes used for housing the recesses of the wooden closing system, water drainage channels, numerous shelves and square niches.
The existing burial hypogea are all united by the traces of the galleries of the monosome and polysomal arcosoles, by small recesses for storing oil lamps and by Christian symbols, monograms and crosses, graffiti on the walls. At the center of the rupestrian settlement there is a large cave, a place of worship of the settlement, as can be seen from the graffiti inscriptions in Greek found in it, probable ex-votos, numerous graffiti on the walls of the caves, allow to attribute the use of the same in the Byzantine age. The most evident phase is the Byzantine one
Historical Information
We learn from Thucydides that a group of Megarians from Greece came to Sicily in the years of Greek colonization. They first stopped in the place called Trotilon which is found along the banks of the Pantakias river, probably the Porcaria river; subsequently, driven out by the Leontinoi, after various vicissitudes, they founded Megara Hyblaea. There is no historical information about the late ancient rock settlement. In the ninth century. the Arab raids probably caused a shift of the fishing community, who lived in this place, towards safer and more protected sites such as Timpa Ddieri and Molinello. Many of the caves were used as a refuge during the last war and are sometimes still used as tool sheds. In the 1392th century, Brucoli was an important shipper who exported the wheat produced in the territories of Augusta and Lentini. A modest inhabited center developed around the port whose economy was linked to the maritime marketing of grain, which until the sixteenth century was the main source of income. Between 1396 and XNUMX King Martin I the Younger granted as a fief to Gerardo di
Guimerano the income of twenty ounces above the port of Brucoli, five hundred to Ugo di Santa Pau and six hundred and forty-seven to Pietro Sancio di Calataimbio (?). In the fifteenth century Brucoli was aggregated to the Aragonese royal chamber. The royal governor Giovanni Cabastida, between 1462 and 1467 or more probably between 1466 and 1467, had the castle built to guard the emporium. The castle subsequently passed to the Lullo family and then was aggregated to Augusta, in the sixteenth century, when it returned to the royal domain. In the first half of the sixteenth century, two quadrangular lines of fortification were built around the fifteenth-century tower
Bibliographic sources
Houel J., Voyage pittoresque des isles de Sicile, de Malta et de Lipari, 1785, vol. III, pp. 67-68; Amico V., Topographical Dictionary of Sicily, 1858, sv Bruca; ditto sv Pantagia; Orsi P., “NSc” 1898, p.22; Archaeological Periegesi, "NSc", 1902b, pp. 637-639; Bernabò Brea, The twilight of king yblon, “PP”, CXX, 1968, pp. 169,186; Messina A., The rupestrian churches of Syracuse, 1979, p.81; Russo I-Gianino P., The stone age in the territory of Augusta, “Historical news of Augusta”, 15, 1987, pp.18-19; Basile B., The Syracusan coastal arch, in Lena G. - Basile B. - Di Stefano G., Landings, ports, coastal settlements and coastlines of south-eastern Sicily from Prehistory to Late Antiquity, "ArchStorSir", s . III, II, 1988, p.23; Russo-Gianino-Lanteri, Augusta and neighboring territories, I, Prehistory, From the Upper Palaeolithic to the pre-colonization, “ArchStorSir”, suppl. 5, 1996, pp. 92-96; Lanteri R., Augusta and its territory. Elements for an archaeological map, 1997, p.18-19; Lanteri, New acquisitions on the early Bronze Age in the Hyblean area: the necropolis of Cava Baratta on the middle course of the Cantera, “ArchStorSir”, 1996b, p.22. L. Di Giacomo, A litho-cultural expression of the Augustan territory: the limestone of Granatello, in Archeology of architecture VI, 2001, pp.14-15; Nicotra F., Byzantine rock settlement of the lower course of the Porcaria, degree thesis, University of Catania, Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, 2004. Guidelines 1999, Archeol Sites Map. n. 215.
Area of archaeological interest, art. 142 letter m) Legislative Decree 42/04
(Source text of survey form n.14 Landscape Plan of the Province of Syracuse - Archaeological Heritage)
Bibliography and in-depth documents:
100) FIRST SICILY - AT THE ORIGINS OF SICILIAN SOCIETY - volume first edited by Sebastiano Tusa Palermo 1997.
Ignazio Caloggero: Sicily between History, Myths and Legends. Vol. 1: From Prehistory to the Phoenicians. First edition 2018 - Revised and updated edition of 2022
History of Sicily – 1.3.1: Neolithic and the Birth of Agriculture in Sicily
History of Sicily – 1.3.2: Religiosity and Burials in the Neolithic Period
History of Sicily – 1.3.3: Art in the Neolithic
History of Sicily – 1.3.4: List of Neolithic Sites
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