Prehistoric village of the Faraglioni

The Villaggio dei Faraglioni stands at the northern tip of the island on a Tyrrhenian plain at 17 meters above sea level, defended by a mighty wall reinforced by thirteen towers. In the village the Superintendency has carried out several excavation campaigns, those of the years 1974, 1975, 1977, 1980, were limited interventions, they were entrusted to me by the Superintendent prof. Vincenzo Tusa. The excavations, although very limited, revealed that the village had been built according to a preordained urban plan, certainly influenced by contacts with the Mycenaean world.
The "houses" of the village are huts that recall the most advanced Sicilian haystacks; they have an elliptical and even square shape with rounded corners, sometimes with a bench on one side, an atrium, a warehouse. The walls also reach the unusual height of about one meter. The excavation campaigns of the years 1991, 1992, 1994, were entrusted by the Superintendent Dr. Carmela Angela Di Stefano to dr. Ross Holloway of Brown University. Other excavation campaigns have taken place in recent years under the direction of Dr. Francesca Spatafora. The interior of the huts is strewn with ceramics, of different shapes, in quantities that are unmatched in our territory: trays similar to the modern form, with an average diameter of 60 cm with a maximum of one meter. Jars of various sizes, from 20 cm to 95 cm. Drawer cups with stirrup grip or with a long ribbon with sometimes “horned” apex. There are also numerous clay andirons and horns, probably both of votive use, and many other forms. The most recurrent vascular shape is the cup or cup on a high trumpet foot, about 40 cm high, white, from this branch off some ribs modeled in volutes that develop up to the intermediate spaces. I proposed this very typical and very elegant shape as a symbol of this village (Mannino, 1997). In 1991, during the excavations in the village, an episode occurred similar to the well-known discovery of the Modigliani granite heads, sculpted by three Florentine friends found in the Medici ditch. Some pranksters, thinking of making an interesting joke to the excavators of the village, made sure that in the investigated air a finding they had fashioned, singular, of exceptional interest, even a small "female statue in tuff" the excavators found in the find thought to a botros, that is to a votive pit and, consequently, dr. Holloway also thought of a shrine. After the publication of a related essay in "Archaeological Sicily", the magazine received three color images of the "in progress" find, irrefutable proofs of a forgery on which the competent bodies have not yet pronounced themselves, and with their silence continue to cover a bad cooperation. Those essays were considered "excavations" by the great master of the Sicilian tradition, Luigi Bernabò Brea during a conference to celebrate the Ustica-Aeolian Islands twinning. F ° 249 IV NE, Ustica Island; UTM: UC42008735, Altitude: 18 m.

Text source: Giovanni Mannino: Guide to the Prehistory of Palermo - List of prehistoric sites in the province of Palermo - Sicilian Institute for Political and Economic Studies)

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Information contributions: Ignazio Caloggero Web

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