Recherche par auteur > Bonanno Giuliana

During the fifth century BC, Sicily underwent trough important political reassessments. The escalating of tensions between Carthage and the Greeks for the control of the island and the sea-canals resulted in the battle of Himera (480 BC), and then in the conquest of Selinus (409 BC), with the beginning of the Carthaginian rule in Western Sicily.

In this historical framework, the Punic and Greek colonies, founded in Sicily between the eighth and the seventh centuries BC, found expression in the constitution of organized urban layouts and dwelling quarters in the fifth century BC. This aspect is well represented in central-western Sicily, where the boundaries between the three coexisting cultures - Greek, Punic and Indigenous - are blurred and permeable.

This paper will present a comparison between domestic layouts and use of space. As cases studies, it considers Motya, a Phoenician colony, the Greek colonies Himera and Selinus, and the indigenous sites in Monte Iato and Monte Maranfusa.

An in-depth study of the living space of the houses is proposed through access analysis and functional analysis of the spaces, based on furniture and material found inside. This will highlight similarities and differences between daily lives in the Punic, Greek, and Indigenous cities that entertained political, economic, and social relationships and sometimes conflicts and tensions, while sharing the same territory thus maintaining their own cultural background.

If we assume that the layout of a house is essentially determined by culture, it partly reflects the society that produced it. But the climate and the conformation of the land are also important elements that have an impact on the elaboration of the architectural model, the urban layout and domestic life choices. Western Sicily has varied landscapes: coastal areas, plains, but also plateaus lined with rivers and forests. Therefore, this analysis of the houses in the selected cities will show that the choice of a certain type of house depends not only on a cultural factor, but also on mutual influences between different cultures, the historical context, and climatic and environmental adaptations.