Ancient Cemetery Discovered in Gela – History Blog

Ancient corpses used in the 6th and 5th centuries BC were found in Gela, Sicily. So far, six graves have been found: two belong to adults, two belong to children, and two are uncertain.

Gela is a Greek colony founded in 688 BC and is located on the southwest coast of Sicily. The city was fired by Carthage General Himilko in 405 BC, which has been rare since then, which makes this small cemetery of oversized archaeological significance.

The modern city is built next to ancient sites in the 13th century, but the historic center overlaps with the ancient city and many archaeological remains. Therefore, the site was excavated to recycle any archaeological material that might exist before the urban space was redeveloped into a green area.

Tomb 1 does not contain human remains, only two left belts (narrow perfume kettles) date from 500 to 475 BC. The body was removed shortly after burial, but the cemetery was left behind, so robbery was not a motive. Archaeologists believe that the remains may have been moved in response to natural disasters, such as a sudden clay flow, which seals the area and forces bereaved people to transfer the bodies to the bodies as soon as possible, leaving serious items behind.

One of the famous graves is a Kalypter Hegemon, a slender curved Terracotta roof tiles covered with flat tiles or joints of roof ridges to prevent rainwater from seeping. One of the cemeteries is likely recovered from a nearby temple, whose sacred character is redeployed in the context of a funeral.

In funeral settings, this reuse of building materials is not uncommon in practice in the Greek world, but the specific presence of peripheral locations (e.g. Gela) at peripheral locations opens new problems for the original source and destination of the object. […]

At present, it is not certain whether the funeral belongs to a member of the same family unit, but archaeologists are considering this hypothesis and can be confirmed by stratigraphic analysis of the region and anthropological studies of bone residues, retained skeletons. In this sense, the overall background of the discovery is the characteristics of close-range graves arranged in relatively contained spaces, indicating that the organized use of funeral spaces is consistent with ordinary practices during the ancient Greek colonial period. In addition to the graves, archaeological investigations also discovered artificially carved soft rocks. The interior was found to trace back to the crater and some amphibian ceramic fragments, objects that were associated with the storage and consumption of liquids, possibly wine or oil. At present, the function of the rock remains uncertain: it may be an ancient abandoned quarry reused as sediment or a ritual background associated with burial. Now experts have examined the materials found in it for a more precise typological and chronological classification.