Archeologia del culto a Siracusa. Depositi votivi e pratiche rituali intorno all’Athenaion di Ortigia

A century later, this work is the updated and thorough re-edition of the “methodical explorations” undertaken by Paolo Orsi in the area around the Athenaion of Ortygia, the acropolis of Syracuse (1910-1917). Thanks to a gradual hermeneutic process intertwining the excavation data – published and unpublished – the analysis of the architecture and the systematic investigation of the votive deposits, still largely unpublished, the author provides a new reconstruction of the central sanctuary of Ortygia during the Archaic Greek period, from an architectural, anthropological and cultural point of view. Since the material culture, if properly examined, can provide evidence of ritual and cult practices, this research is the first ever investigation of the entire range of the ritual and votive objects from Orsi’s excavations, from a typological, contextual and functional point of view. Therefore, based on the most recent methodological approach, the interpretation of votive deposits allows not only to identify the ritual agency related to the sanctuary’s architectural development, but also to understand the ritual communication between the individual, the community and the worshipped deity, within the larger system of the polis religion. Thanks to the interrelation between contexts, votives and their meanings, this study sheds new light on several aspects of the Archaic Greek sanctuary, on the worshippers and on their deities, in a diachronic perspective ranging from the foundation of the city to the Deinomenid tyranny. Within this new framework, this work constitutes a very remarkable advancement in the understanding of Archaic Syracuse and, in particular, of one of its most significant sacred spaces.