The Megalith Builders and Sicily

One of the main problems of Mediterranean prehistory is how to explain the presence of megalithic architecture in Malta and Pantelleria and its absence in Sicily. Till now this phenomenon has been explained by proposing cultural influences that involved the two islands.

Now, after a decade of archaeological researches, a few new discoveries allow us to identify a low scale diffusion of megalithism also in Sicily. To explain such a phenomenon, mainly confined to funerary architecture of the Early and Middle Bronze Age (first half of II millennium B.C.), it is necessary to understand which are the main features of that period.

Following recent researches in the western part of the island we can make out the cultural and ethnical dynamics that were present during the beginning of the II millenium when Bell-Beaker groups settled in north-western and south-western Sicily. Newcomers and the local Naro-Partanna groups found many ways of cultural interrelation, as shown by pottery.

It appears that along with Bell-Beaker diffusion a low scale megalithic architecture, as well as metallurgy, were introduced into Sicily.

Since Bell-Beaker groups came from Sardinia in two main waves it was from that region that many of the cultural influences should have originated. In this way we can explain many typological similarities as well as the megalithic evidence of Pantelleria that, though not related to Bell-Beaker groups, was born in the framework of the typical Early Bronze Age culture of western Sicily (Rodi-Tindari, Vallelunga-Boccadifalco-Mursia) which, through Moarda, received strong Beaker influences.

Although Sicily was in that period (Early Bronze Age) clearly divided into two cultural areas: Castelluccio with painted pottery to the East (strongly linked with the Aegean civilization) and Rodi-Tindari etc. with unpainted and incised pottery to the West (strongly linked with peninsular civilisation), there was some cultural interaction, such as that produced by the Bell-Beaker groups. It was through such interactions that elements of megalithic architecture came into the eastern part of the island.

During the following Middle Bronze Age, Sicily was unified under the Thapsos-Milazzese culture. It is the period in which we can place the presence of the Sikani mentioned in the historical sources. In that period the megalithic technique continued to be used in funerary architecture.

The problem is to see whether that megalithic influence left traces in the ideology of the local inhabitants. I think that, apart from isolated cases, the entire Sicilian civilization absorbed the Mediterranean ideology that was based on the worship of fertility forces centred on the Great Mother Earth. In this framework we can understand why Sicily, since the Eneolithic (beginning of III millennium B.C.) was almost totally involved in the rock-cut grave ritual.

It is becoming clear that in the passage between the Neolithic and Eneolithic there was a strong ideological change that brought the local groups from a religious belief based on Air elements (such as the famous birds of the Stentinello culture) to another based on Earth elements. An important step in this ideological change could be represented by a stone grave-slab recently found in an Eneolithic graveyard (Roccazzo: western Sicily) that still shows the big Eye of Neolithic tradition, but is already involved in the rock-cut grave ritual.