Recherche par auteur > Giudice Giada Maria Giovanna

Locri is a Greek colony founded on the Ionian coast of southern Calabria by settlers from Locride Ozolia or Opuntia. For more than three hundred years it has been home to a shrine dedicated to Persephone. Indeed, since ancient times, it has been the centre of interest in historical and literary sources and played a prominent role in the sacred geography of Western Greece.According to literary tradition (D.S. 27,4), the Locrian Persephoneion played a privileged role in the sacred geography of Western Greekness. The location of the sanctuary, deducible from the Lyvian text (29, 18; 31, 12, 1-2) which indisputably places the temple of Persephone extra urbem, strongly influenced the studies aimed at identifying the sacred area. Archaeologist P. Orsi succeeded in solving a very controversial issue. He began excavating the area between the Abbadessa and Mannella hills in 1908, in an site connected to the city walls. During the first dig he was already able to define the area occupied by the shrine, on a small terrace facing NW-SE on the slopes of the hill of Mannella. In the same dig the scholar discovered and began exploring the “great favissa”, a large drainage ditch: beneath a mass of practically sterile soil, approximately 2 metres deep, the famous 5,360 votive pinakes, Corinthian and Attic figurines and pottery dating from the end of the seventh century to 440-430 BC came to light.More than 1,500 Attic fragments with black and red figures were sealed in the "favissa" after the ritual crushing, as their profane use was forbidden, and laid there on one occasion as evidenced by the mixture of black and red-figure vases, and terracotta pottery arranged haphazardly. Drinking vessels (kylikes and skyphoi) are prevalent and, to a smaller extent, amphorae and hydriai, although other shapes such as rhyta, lekanides, and kraters are also documented.We would like to present data relating to the last quarter of the 6th century and those relating to the first half-century of the 5th century BC.These are crucial years in which the ritual, on the basis of material evidence, seems to change: the dedication of the famous pinakes, is already a clue. If still during the 6th century BC, e.g., a the huge amount of fragmentary volute kraters was found in the shrine - a fact that distinguishes the Persephoneion from the Magna Graecia and Sicilian shrines, where the shape is only sporadically attested and instead seems to connect Locri more directly to continental Greek religiosity and its rituality - from the beginning of the 5th century, the panorama of pottery shapes seems to change and different types of vessels are attested, conforming to a rite that seems to involve wider strata of the population corresponding to a democratisation of the cult practised in the Persephoneion of Locri Epizephyrii, due to specific historical circumstances.