The Centre for the Study of Ancient Sicily at The University of British Columbia

The Centre for the Study of Ancient Sicily (hereafter CSAS) at the University of British Columbia was created in 2007. The largest island in the Mediterranean, and strategically set at its very centre, at the crossroads of major shipping lines, Sicily is a wonderful laboratory for the study of ancient Mediterranean history. There is an abundant harvest of literary and historical evidence; a considerable amount of inscriptional data; a rich numismatic tradition; and a wealth of archaeology for all periods. There is therefore a huge set of varied data in need of publication and evaluation or re-evaluation; fresh syntheses are constantly required as our perspectives on the island’s past change. Sicily is also a key area for studying processes of culture contact: between Greeks and native peoples from the eighth to fourth centuries BC; between indigenous peoples and the Phoenicio-Punic heritage of western Sicily over the same period; between Greeks and Phoenicians in the eighth and seventh centuries BC; between Greeks and Carthaginians from the sixth to the third centuries BC; and between the predominantly Greek culture of Sicily and the impact of Rome from the third century BC down into late antiquity. Sicily is a lively academic landscape with enormous potential for study from multifarious viewpoints: the evidence to be quarried is inexhaustible.

Mission statement

The CSAS has the following aims, both at UBC and beyond:

• to conduct and publish world-class research on ancient Sicily

• to offer undergraduate and graduate students the possibility of studying ancient Sicily, particularly via field schools

• to offer graduate students the possibility of studying for higher degrees at UBC on Sicilian topics

• to hold lectures, seminars and conferences on Sicilian topics with world-class speakers

• to conduct first-rate archaeological fieldwork in Sicily

• to create a bibliographical data-base of Sicilian publications

• to create a visual data-base of ancient Sicilian sites, monuments and objects

The Sicilian research credentials of its members are amplified below in §3; current fieldwork is discussed in below in §4. The creation of a web-based bibliographical data-base will draw on the extensive bibliographic expertise of the CSAS’s two principal members, Professors Wilson and De Angelis, who have individually reviewed bibliography and intellectual developments in the study of ancient Sicily for the Journal of Hellenic Studies’Archaeological Reports over the last generation. This bibliographic data-base will start with the present and work backwards. There will also be launched an appeal to scholars world-wide to donate books and off-prints to the CSAS to increase UBC’s already very good holdings dedicated to the study of ancient Sicily. With regard to the visual data-base, CSAS’ Director (Professor Roger Wilson) alone possesses an archive of 30,000 colourslides on ancient Sicily, and it is proposed to scan these images in high-resolution to be a ktema es aei (a possession for ever)for UBC. The archive will be unique, containing images of some monuments now destroyed; it has the potential of being a vital researchand teaching tool in UBC. It is proposed that both the bibliographical and the visual web-sites will be restricted for copyright purposes tointernal use in UBC but will be accessible to outside users on payment of an annual fee.

Members

The CSAS has the following members, in three categories:

(a) full members

• Professor Franco De Angelis (UBC), whose research reputation has been built as a scholar of Greek history and archaeology. He has already published two books, The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation (edited, with G. R. Tsetskhladze; Oxford 1994; revised paperback edition 2004), and Megara Hyblaia and Selinous: The development of two Greek city-states in Archaic Sicily (Oxford 2003), and he has been contracted to write a new book tentatively entitled Ancient Greeks in Sicily: society and economy ca. 750 to 250 BCfor Oxford University Press, which on publication is likely to establish itself instantly as a standard work and to supplant Moses Finley’sAncient Sicily as the principal one-volume source in English on ancient Greek Sicily.

• Professor Paul Mosca (UBC), a Phoenicio-Punic epigraphist, who also works on Phoenicio-Punic language, culture and religion across the entire Mediterranean. He has been closely involved with both the American and British excavations at Carthage, and is an expert on the stelai from the Sanctuary of Tanit there (the ‘tophet’). He is a leading authority also on the Phoenician and Punic institutionalised rite of infant sacrifice which took place in the tophet, not only at Carthage but at Motya in Sicily and elsewhere, a topic on which he is writing a book.

• Professor Sam Migliore (Kwantlen University College), aSicilian-born anthropologist of Sicily and of the Italian-Canadian community, who has written on the role played by the Sicilian antiquities in folklore and identity, and a book on the evil eye (Mal'uocchiu: ambiguity, evil eye, and the language of distress, 1997); he has also co-edited Italian lives, Cape Breton memories (1999). His present research project, funded by SSHRC in 2005, is entitled ‘Culture, well-being and a sense of place’.

• Professor Roger Wilson (Director) (UBC), whose interests complement exactly those of Professor De Angelis. An Oxford classicist and ancient historian by training, he is now principally an archaeologist, but one, like De Angelis, competent at handling a wide range of both historical and archaeological evidence. He has been studying Sicily, often making more than one visit per annum, for 38 years, and is well known throughout the island as the leading expert inthe world on Roman imperial Sicily. He has close academic contacts with all the key players in Sicily, both in the universities and in the Soprintendenze of the Region’s Archaeological Service, as well as with other Sicilian scholars world-wide. He has published very extensively on aspects of ancient Sicily, as well as three books, Piazza Armerina (1983), Sicily under the Roman Empire (1990) and Arte e architettura della Sicilia romana (241 BC – AD 535) (2008).

(b) associate members

• Professor Johannes Bergemann (University of Gottingen) studied at Munich (Ph.D 1987) and Gottingen (Habilitation 1994) before teaching at Leipzig and Bochum, where he was also Dean of the Faculty of Arts (2003-05).  Since August 2009 he has been Director of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Gottingen.  He has directed the Gela survey in Sicily and is now conducting another survey in the Agrigentino.  His doctoral dissertation was on Roman equestrian statues (Romische Reiterstatuen, 1987), and he has published books on Attic grave reliefs (Demos und Thanatos, 1997), on the ancient Albanian city of Butrint (1998), and an introduction to Classical Archaeology (2000).  His comprehensive multi-period survey of the hinterland of Gela will be published as Der Gela-Survey. 3000 Jahre Siedlungsgenschichte in Sizilien in 2010.

• Professor Ernesto De Miro (Agrigento),long-time former Superintendent of Antiquities for the Agriento Soprintendnenza, and also Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeologyat the University of Messina, has made in numerable and invaluablec ontributions to Sicilian archaeology over the past fifty years,especially at Agrigento, Eraclea M inoa, and at many indigenous hill-towns of the Sicilian interior, as well as at Lepcis Magna inLibya. His many publications include most recently Agrigento II. I santuari extraurbani. L’Asklepieion (2003) and Leptis Magna: dieci anni di scavi archeologici nell'area del Foro Vecchio (with A. Polito) (2005) A Festchift in his honour was published in 2003 as Archeologia del Mediterraneo: studi in onore di Ernesto De Miro.

• Professor Giovanni Di Stefano (University of Cosenza) is Director of the Archaeological Section of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali at Ragusa, as well as Professor of Late Antique Art and Archaeology at the University of Cosenza. His principal research has centred on the archaeology of the province of Ragusa in all periods of antiquity, on which he has written voluminously in the form of academic papers, conference contributions, books, and guides, with a notable focus on the Greek city of Camarina. He is also Director of an archaeological mission at the Roman sanctuary site at Champlieu in the Forest of Compiegne, France, and ofexcavations at Carthage in north Africa.

• Dr Lorenzo Guzzardi (Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali, Siracusa), currently the Director of the Archaeological Section at Syracuse, has conducted numerous important excavations in Syracuse and its province over the past twenty years. A former Director of the Lentini museum, he has also worked in Enna province, where recently he discovered Sicily’s latest example ofa Greek theatre, that at Monagna di Marzo. He is the author of numerous contributions on the archaeology of eastern Sicily in learned journals, conference proceedings and books.

• Dr Maria Costanza Lentini (Naxos), currently Director of the Roman Villa at Casale near Piazza Armerina, a World Heritage Site, and also responsible for the Museum and Greek city of Sicilian Naxos, has directed excavations at the latter site for many years. She has published extensively on all aspects of its archaeology, including edited books on Un’arula tra Heidelberg e Naxos (1993), Naxos: a quarant’anni dall’inizio degli scavi(1998) and Naxos di Sicilia in età romana e bizantina ed evidenze dai Peloritani (2001). She has also co-edited Damarato: studi di antichità classica offerti a Paola Pelagatti (2000).

• Professor Paola Pelagatti (Rome), formerly Soprintendente alle Antichità in Syracuse (1973–9), and later Superintendent of Southern Etruria and Professor of Archaeology at Cosenza and Viterbo, is an Academician of the Accademiadei Lincei, Italy’s highest academic honour; she is also a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute and an Honorary Fellow of the British School at Rome. Her excavations at Syracuse, Naxos and Camarina in particular have brought her world-wide renown. She is an acknowledged expert on archaic and classical Greek Sicily, and on ancient pottery in Sicily, both local and imported. A Festschift in her honour was published in 2000 as Damarato: studi di antichità classica offerti a Paola Pelagatti.

• Dr Jonathan Prag (University of Oxford), Fellow and Tutor at Merton College, Oxford, whose doctoral research concerned Sicily during the Roman Republic, is a historian who is also conversant with the rich vein of epigraphic, numismatic and archaeological evidence; he is the author of several important articles on Republican Sicily, has edited Sicilia Nutrix plebes Romanae: rhetoric, law and taxation in Cicero’s Verrines (2007) and is joint editor of the forthcoming The Hellenistic West (CUP) and of The Entella tablets in context (OUP).

• Dr Francesca Spatafora (Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali, Palermo) is Director of the Sezione Archeologica of the Palermo Soprintendenza, and long-time colleague and collaborator of both Professors Wilson and De Angelis. Elected a member of the German Archaeological institute in Rome, she has conducted many excavations in western Sicily over the past 25years, both in Palermo itself and its hinterland, and is the author or co-author of numerous specialist papers and books, including Monte Maranfusa (2003) and Das Eigene und das Andere: Griechen, Sikaner und Elymer: neue archaeologische Forschungen im antiken Sizilien (2004).

• Dr Stefano Vassallo (Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali, Palermo) has directed excavations at the Greek colony of Himera for many years, as well as sites in the hinterland, especially Colle Madore e Montagna dei Cavalli. His books include Colle Madore (1999), Himera: città greca (2005) and (with F. Spatafora) Das Eigene und das Andere: Griechen, Sikaner und Elymer (2004), and he is also the author of numerous specialist papers. He ha salso been responsible for the presentation of the Museum at Himera and at several lesser sites in the hinterland.

(c) research associates

All graduate students at UBC who have research interests which embrace some aspect of Sicily will be invited to become research associates of CSAS; but any graduate student who can demonstrate an interest in and knowledge of res Sicilianae may also request enrolment from the Director. Currently the following have been nominated Research Associates:

• Ms Karen Aberle

• Mr Edwin De Vries

• Ms Christine Lane

 If funding permits, the CSAS would like in due course to appoint a Research Assistant whose duties will include:

• scanning 30,000 slides onto a database at high resolution

• researching and maintaining the bibliographical database

• organising conferences and lectures on Sicilian topics

• organising practical arrangements for Sicilian fieldwork

• assisting with other aspects of CSAS’ work as appropriate

Fieldwork

Fieldwork is an essential part of historical research: it provides the oxygen of fresh discoveries which allow the subject to be continually re-assessed and our knowledge about the ancient world to be ever expanding. Student involvement in this fieldwork will be strongly encouraged and promoted through the establishment of field-schools in Sicily. This will provide UBC students, both undergraduate and graduate, with experiential education, in which valuable skills, particularly scientific and life skills, will be gained.  It is hoped that, funding permitting, fieldwork in Sicily will form a central part of the activities of CSAS.

 UBC’s recent and current Sicilian field projects:

 • The Monte Polizzo project, province of Trapani, which Professor De Angelis has collaborated with colleagues from the University of Stanford. This is an indigenous, Punic, and medieval town strategically located on the top and sides of a hill rising almost 726 m asl. Excavations have taken place in July and August each year since 2000. UBC students have actively participated in these excavations. The project has now wrapped up, and in the summer of 2008 Professor De Angelis hopes to be launching a new project focussing on an indigenous site of the Early Iron Age. This new project aims to combine regional survey and excavation to explore the complexity of indigenous Sicilian culture before, during, and after Phoenician and Greek colonization in the island in the eighth and seventh centuries BC.

• The Caucana project is designed to investigate the character and economic context of the late Roman and Byzantine village of Caucana near Punta Secca, on the south coast of Sicily in the province of Ragusa. The site was noted but not published by Paolo Orsi early in the twentieth century, and was only brought to scholarly attention in the mid-1960s, when building expansion for holiday homes encountered ancient structures. Surface clearance identified a village settlement of some 25 individual structures scattered haphazardly along the coastal strip, and some of these were partly investigated at the time by Professor Paola Pelagatti, in a series of campaigns which lasted until 1972. One of those structures, the church, has also been investigated more recently,by Professor G. Di Stefano, who is also co-director of the present project. The Caucana project has concentrated on Building 6, where excavation has taken place between 2008 and 2010. For press releases click here and here. An initial report on this work has been published in Journal of Roman Archaeology 22 (2009) 412-415, and others are forthcoming in American Journal of Archaeology (April 2011), Mouseion (2011), Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Board Game Studies, Minerva, Antike Welt, Archeologia Viva and Current World Archaeology.

Fundraising

The CSAS intends to be actively involved in fundraising for its activities. Its members will apply for funds both individually (for their own projects) and collectively (for joint projects).  Funds will be sought from a variety of public and private sources, such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) in the case of the former and the Sicilian expatriate community in Canada in the case of the latter.