Reconstructing early colonial identity: funerary space in Archaic Gela (Sicily)

In recent years a number of scholars have drawn attention to the lack of research on the reconstruction of the social profile and cultural identity of Greek colonies in Sicily, a perspective which can be drawn from archaeological evidence and the ancient written sources. In connection with this, the analysis of burial customs has increasingly been recognised as one of the most important tools in understanding past societies, their fears and anxieties, and their desires and ambitions. My contribution will focus on the results of a major new examination of the Archaic cemeteries of Gela, containing mainly 7th and 6th century burials, a work I began almost ten years ago as PhD, and then I have continued during postdoctoral research. The final results will soon appear in my book Profumi di argilla. Tombe con unguentari corinzi nella necropoli arcaica di Gela, now in press. The investigation of the Gela archaic cemeteries was Paolo Orsi’s first archaeological intervention in Gela at the beginning of the XXth century, after almost two hundreds years of foreign and private semi-illegal diggings. The main outcome of this excavation was the discovery of 570 graves. During the next decades, 70 other graves were brought to light by Dinu Adamesteanu and Piero Orlandini, two great figures of Gela archeology. In total 636 burials were unearthed, about which we have only preliminary data. The recent necessary review of the Archaic cemeteries of Gela has highlighted some important elements dealing with the demographic significance of the remains, the burial variability, the arrangement of the grave goods, the “representation” of feminine and masculine genders, the function of the so called “indicatori etnici” ect. The analysis has finally underlined a crucial point: the archaic Geloan community, although dominated between the VIIth and the VIth sec. B.C. by biological and cultural hybridism and characterized by broad phenomena of people and goods mobility in both directions (greek and indigenous), does not seem to be particularly interested neither in discriminating groups of different ethnicity, nor in showing different gender roles. On the contrary it’s clear that the biggest effort in “displaying” a new cultural identity is expressed through the desire to appear as a society in construction and to show the crystallization of the young colonial community in social groups and in specific oikiai. Within this framework the young Geloan community of the archaic period shows a careful and constant solidarity in the formalization of subadult death.