Pantalica in the Sicilian Late Bronze and Iron Ages: Excavations of the Rock-cut Chamber Tombs by Paolo Orsi from 1895 to 1910

The site of Pantalica in southeast Sicily is renowned for thousands of rock-cut chamber tombs which honeycomb the steep slopes of an imposing limestone promontory. Already noted in antiquarian scholarship of the 16th century, these striking archaeological monuments were excavated mainly between 1895 and 1910 by the distinguished archaeologist, Paolo Orsi, and have attracted visitors since the 18th century. Pantalica has long been regarded as the defining site of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (circa 1250-730 BC) in southern Sicily and was recently added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. However, many of the excavated finds, as well as a great deal of information contained in Orsi’s excavation notebooks, have never been published before. This volume provides the first detailed account of the history of research at Pantalica, a discussion of the main monuments, and a comprehensive, fully illustrated catalogue of the tomb material housed in the Syracuse museum. A fresh assessment of the contexts and chronological range of the pottery and metalwork reveals the distinctive nature of local burial customs as well as evidence for contact between Sicily and the Late Mycenaean world in the 13th-12th centuries BC, and between indigenous people and Greek settlers during the first phase of Greek colonisation in the 8th-7th centuries BC.