The archaic sanctuary of Polizzello was built in the second half of the 8th century BC, on the acropolis of the mountain of the same name, approximately 900 meters above sea level, over pre-existing rectangular structures dating from the Late and Final Bronze Age phases. The lower plateaus housed the residential settlement, or Piano di città, and the necropolis.
The study of this and other sanctuaries that arose from the 8th century BC onwards on the heights of some towns in central-western Sicily has allowed us to reread the history of the encounter between the indigenous population of the Sicani and the Greeks who established their colonies on the eastern coast of the island.
The large sacred area (fig. 1) is enclosed by a wall of Temenos, that is, the wall surrounding the sacred space, separating it from the profane, along whose internal perimeter six buildings, designated by the letters A to F, were built between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. All were circular in plan and were called sacellum, except for the last one, which was rectangular. The central space, partially paved, was left intentionally free, likely for the needs of cult activities and ritual functions, as evidenced by the presence of pits and small deposits.
The construction of the wall of Temenos and the adoption of the circular architectural model are two symbolically important acts: it is the first time that an empty space, distinct from the residential area, is entirely dedicated to worship; within this space, several circular buildings, some of monumental size, will later be constructed.
This type of plan is linked to a much older architectural tradition, dating back to the shape of the circular hut of the Northern Pantalica period, which characterised the housing unit of the island environment throughout the second millennium BC.
The choice of the circular plan, also taken up in other Sican centers of central-western Sicily - including Sabucina (CL), Colle Madore (Lercara Friddi, PA), Monte Polizo and Mokarta (Salemi, TP), Monte Maranfusa (Roccamena, PA) Casteltermini (AG) - is believed to be linked to a strong need to affirm one's ethnic identity, probably threatened first by the Siculi, then by the Greeks in the 7th century and finally by the Phoenicians in the 5th century BC.
This would seem to be confirmed by its re-presentation in the object of worship represented by the numerous clay models of circular huts (fig. 2) found in both sacred and funerary contexts of the Sican centers.
These models, in association with the famous bronze statuette with the particular "trident" shape (fig. 3), whose profile recalls that of a figure with raised arms, and with the numerous clay tubes or stands, found in the earliest layers of the acropolis, recall the cult equipment of the Cretan sanctuaries of the Late Bronze Age or the early historical period, clearly dedicated to the Mother Goddess, the ancient Minoan deity of nature.
Reminiscences of distant Cretan origins lead Dario Palermo to believe that the archaic sanctuary of Polizzello houses one of the oldest testimonies of the cult of the Matéres or Metéres, brought to Sicily by the Cretan people following Minos, and which, according to Diodorus Siculus, was widely spread among the indigenous populations of the island even outside the main sanctuary of the cult, which was located in the as yet unlocated Sicilian site of Engyon.
The first buildings to be constructed, in the mid-8th century BC, were the shrines E and C, of ​​considerable size and featuring a large hearth in the center: they were the site of collective rituals, mainly based on the consumption of animal flesh.
The practice of ritual meals was a sort of social glue, an important moment to reaffirm the cohesion of the group and one's identity.
The original nucleus of the Polizzello sanctuary, therefore, is characterized as typically indigenous, both in the choice of architectural forms and in the choice of cultic practices that have their roots in the religiosity of prehistoric Sicily with aspects linked to the world of nature and fertility, as also demonstrated by the numerous depositions of bones of sacrificed animals, often small in size, the horns of cows and rams and the strong emphasis placed on the figure of the bull.
Between the mid-7th and early 6th century BC, during its heyday, the sacred area underwent significant architectural transformations: the size of Sacellum E was reduced; two new, smaller circular buildings, designated A and D, were constructed, which would undergo further modifications over the years; Sacellum A was abandoned in favor of the new Sacellum B, which in turn was abandoned around the mid-5th century along with all its contents. From around the mid-6th century, for approximately fifty years, the acropolis of Polizzello remained deserted, likely due to the conquest policy of the Agrigento tyrant Phalaris, specifically aimed at the central-northern areas of the island and particularly against the city of Himera. It was again frequented and renovated between the late 6th and early 5th century BC, most likely no longer by indigenous people but by Greeks, and for only a few decades.
The expansion and reorganization of the sacred area that took place in the 7th century corresponded to the differentiation of ritual activities carried out in the various buildings and the first appearance, among the votive offerings, of ceramic objects, including those for domestic use, of both indigenous and foreign production, and objects of personal ornamentation of the Greek type.
It was during this period that the characteristics of the cult performed at the Polizzello sanctuary were defined. It focused primarily on the collective ritual act of slaughtering and consuming animal flesh of various species and sizes, the so-called "sacrificial kitchen" or "meal sacrifice." This ritual, which was accompanied in Sacellum B by libations of clear Greek origin, was also performed. This ritual, perhaps also performed within the context of chthonic cults (as the presence of lamps suggests), involved, at its conclusion, the deposition of the remains of the meal and the pottery used during the ceremony, intentionally broken and defunctionalized or placed upside down on the ground, as was the custom in Minoan Crete.
The impressive quantity and quality of the votive offerings discovered indicates a high number of participants in religious ceremonies and a sudden increase in the wealth of those who gathered at the sanctuary, which perhaps during this period, as De Miro observes, became a sort of pan-Sican religious center, frequented by people from other villages in Sikania. Regarding personal ornaments, the most conspicuous deposits were found in shrine D, where cult activities were primarily dedicated to female deities: numerous globular, cylindrical, or ovoid necklace beads that were used as necklace elements or to decorate the prongs of brooches; bracelets and pendants; disc- or spectacle-shaped brooches; Pendants also feature zoomorphic figures, such as those in the form of a monkey and a crouching ram, found in various votive contexts in Greece and Sicily, and the one in the form of a bird from Shrine A, clearly of Levantine taste but likely of local manufacture, as suggested by the rendering of the eye by means of an impressed circle. The ivory handle, decorated with impressed circles and featuring holes for attachment, also recalls objects found in Perachora (Peloponnese) and Ephesus (Turkey) and variously interpreted.
There are also ivory bars decorated with engraved circles, used as necklace fasteners or spacers.
Mostly these objects were made of ivory, bone and amber as the Greeks considered these materials the most suitable for offerings to female deities, as demonstrated by those found in the sanctuaries of Artemis Orthia in Sparta and of Hera in Samos.
There are also objects made from other materials: seashell necklaces, bronze or stone pendants, bronze finger rings and glass paste elements.
Sometimes numerous similar ornamental objects were found intact and intact, other times only half or partially preserved. In this case, too, the meaning of the ritual breaking of objects is similar to that of animal sacrifice to the deities: a killing as a final offering, life given to the deity.
The feminine world is also reflected in various loom weights of a pyramidal or truncated pyramidal shape, with a hole through the top, placed next to a small fireplace together with spindle whorls and an upside-down lamp. These offerings, an absolute novelty in the indigenous cult context, are considered by Palermo to be anathemata (votive offerings for grace received or requested) probably dedicated by women to a female deity on the occasion of the most important moments of their lives, such as marriage and childbirth.
A particularly interesting object found in shrines B and D is the iron "temple key" (fig. 4): these keys, typical of Hellenic sanctuaries dedicated to female deities, are depicted in some vase paintings in the hands of priestesses of the goddesses Athena and Artemis. In the absence of traces of locking systems in the shrine thresholds, they have been considered objects representing female priestly status or as votive gifts from women giving birth. Their presence in indigenous contexts is unanimously interpreted as the product of intense relationships between Greeks and indigenous populations, mediated and facilitated by women, who are recognized as having played an active and important role in forging relationships between indigenous populations and Greek colonies, including through the sharing of ritual behaviors and the recognition and acceptance of common plans between indigenous and Greek deities.
Building B, predominantly associated with the male-military sphere, revealed an extraordinary wealth of sacred deposits, with indigenous and imported materials, especially iron spearheads, sometimes intentionally fragmented, defensive weapons, including a very rare bronze helmet of Cretan manufacture dating to the late 7th century BC, bronze statuettes of donors, two bronze plates in the shape of a leaping dolphin, which must have formed the episema of a Greek shield found in a nearby deposit, and the clay figurine of a warrior with a pronounced ithyphallic sign, a characteristic associated with male fertility, whose cult was practiced within the shrine.
For Palermo these offerings find a striking coincidence with those described by Plutarch for the sanctuary of the Matéres of Engyon, where the most ancient and precious votive offerings were precisely the spears and the helmet deposited by Odysseus and the Cretan hero Meriones on the occasion of their nòstos ('return') from Troy. Plutarch, as confirmed by Stesichorus of Himera, who lived during the years when the building B depot was being built, states that the first to place the image of the dolphin on the shield was Odysseus himself.
These coincidences for Palermo are further elements towards the identification of the sanctuary of Polizzello as a place of worship dedicated to the Matéres.
However, this shrine also contains depositions related to the feminine world, such as, in addition to the aforementioned "temple key," the large double palmette in ivory and amber (fig. 5), a unique object in archaic Sicily, perhaps an ornament on a wooden piece of furniture or a casket, which harks back to the practice, documented in vase paintings, of offering female deities caskets filled with votive gifts on wedding days; the pair of small ivory heads (fig. 6), with iron cores and triangular faces with distinct Daedalian features, on which the eyes are represented by two small impressed circles filled with a dot in the center, most likely the representation of female figures of a divine nature. The rendering of the details, which recall the objects of personal adornment described above, suggests a type of manufacturing that is certainly local.
Given the quantity of votive offerings found inside them, Palermo believes that the shrines also had the function of actual shrines. thesaurus, small buildings that a city dedicated to a sanctuary as a representation, intended to contain the furnishings necessary for religious ceremonies and processions.
Another building has been brought to light by recent archaeological investigations carried out at the City Plan: it is a rectangular construction divided into two rooms and equipped with an outdoor space that cannot be considered a domestic living space, but rather a functional surface for the outdoor performance of sacrifices, followed by the cooking and consumption of the meat. The ritual involved the collection of blood that flowed through a rython metal with which, presumably, an altar was sprinkled, above which several depositions were found.
Il rhyton, often linked to the cult of death and the heroization of the deceased, was then ritually placed inside between two specially hollowed-out and concave stones. Around it and the altar, among other objects, were found knucklebones and truncated-pyramidal clay weights, as well as a bowl with a plastic model of a hut nestled in the hollow, a metaphor for the abode of the "absent" goddess. This attests to the fact that in this space of the City Plan, too, the epiphany of nature was expected to occur, as on the acropolis and necropolis, during funeral rites.

Historical notes

The importance of the Polizzello site was recognized by scholars at the end of the nineteenth century, when Antonino Salinas carried out some surveys there and collected numerous ceramic fragments.
The first archaeological excavations were then started by Paolo Orsi and Rosario Carta, in two very short campaigns in 1921 and 1926, which concentrated on the necropolis and some portions of the settlement.
Excavations were resumed much later in 1980 by Ernesto De Miro and Graziella Fiorentini, and systematically from 2000 to 2006 by Rosalba Panvini of the Superintendency of Caltanissetta, under the scientific direction of Dario Palermo, professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Catania. These explorations covered both the necropolis and the settlement area, especially the summit plateau of the acropolis where the large sanctuary had previously been discovered.
Further archaeological investigations were carried out between 2013 and 2015 in the City Plan.
The Sicanians were one of the three indigenous populations who, according to Thucydides, inhabited Sicily along with the Sicels and the Elymians at the time of the arrival of the first Greek colonists; from them the island was called Sikania, a name later restricted to the central-southern part, corresponding roughly to the present-day provinces of Caltanissetta and Agrigento, where the Sicanian people had settled in historical times, perhaps due to the eruption of Mount Etna, as Timaeus claims, or the arrival of the Sicels, as Thucydides instead maintains.
According to Diodorus, the Sicans lived in villages scattered across the territory, without forming a single political entity; each community, often at war with the others, had its own leader.
Antiochus, a Syracusan historian of the 5th century BC, began his history of Sicily with the reign of Kokalos, a Sican dynasty who welcomed the fugitive Daedalus into his palace at Inico, prompting Minos's expedition to Sicily, where he later met his death. Daedalus is credited with building the impregnable fortress of Camicus, which was unsuccessfully besieged by the Cretan king, and which today is most likely identified with Sant'Angelo Muxaro. Luigi Bernabò Brea, comparing the archaeological finds from the two centres, identified in the 1950s the so-called Sant'Angelo Muxaro – Polizzello culture, characterised by the survivals of elements dating back to the Middle and Late Bronze Age cultures (1390-1000 BC), still imbued with Aegean memories, onto which new elements were grafted, such as the geometric decoration of Greek origin but created with the traditional technique of incision and impression, or painted decoration.