Why does archeology matter? Come to Licodia Eubea and find out.
It’s the town of the documentary and archeological communication film festival (festival della comunicazione e del cinema archeologico). It hosts a medieval castle with unexplored basement, a museum with ceramic artefacts that are born out of a unique mix between indigenous and greek cultures. Its very name; Licodia Eubea, hides an archeological dispute.
To know better about this, we crossed it during our walk.
We have no doubt: it was special to be here. Maybe because it was the first town out of the beaten path of the Via Francigena di Sicilia and we didn’t know how it would be. Maybe because the people we met treated us like special guests; offering us everything, from accommodation to a warm welcome – at our arrival in the main square, five people stood to greet us: vice-mayor, town councillor, museum keeper, B&B owner, and Luca Caruso, a volunteer in Archeoclub d’Italia, a public movement promoting the enhancement of Italian archeological sites.
Luca has guided us on a walk to discover some of the town’s treasures. The SantaPau castle ruins, for example. Mount Etna on one side and the Gela plain on the other provide an epic backdrop to the medieval fortress that dominates the landscape.
The remnants of the castle are public space and easily accessible. In places it seems like watching pictures of the day after the great earthquake of 1693. Underground passages still full of rubble, buried chambers never reached by any archeological excavation. The movement Archeoclub d’Italia, with its volunteers, does a lot to keep it clean every year.
The place could strike as odd. A great pile of fallen walls and columns on which eucalyptus trees and wild herb grow. Locals often walk their dogs or take a stroll here. The life of today walking on the life of yesterday; hills like books of stone that we have yet to read, layers of history we have yet to unpack.
We go down main street and enter the former church of Saint Benedict and Saint Clare. It was closed in the late XIX century; about 100 years later it was renovated and turned into a public venue run by Archeoclub d’Italia.
What if, we reflected, this was the best way of redeveloping former religious buildings to give more space to public gatherings? The towns with an excess of churches and shortage of clerics could really use this as an example.
The former church hosts various events, among which an important festival: the archeological communication film festival. It is held every year in the month of October and everyone can submit their work. It is the festival that promotes dissemination of archeology and archeological matters.
What is archeology and why is it a common good?
The general view on archeology, we thought, jumps between two extremes: the daring adventures of Indiana Jones on one side, the never-ending construction sites on the other. Between romanticism and boredom with the risk, maybe, of labelling it as a useless discipline.
It seems appropriate that the festival is held here, in Licodia Eubea, where one can appreciate the importance of sparking the public’s interest in archeology. The town’s artefacts show the evolution of an ancient, autochthonous culture (Sicels) and how it came into contact with allochthonous cultures (Greek).
And then because around its foundations a mystery lingers.
Let’s start from its name, Licodia Eubea. What will it mean, Eu-bea, four vowels in five letters, a sort of second name that rhymes with the first?
We liked the place name immediately. It evokes exotic locations, like those names you read while perusing a map during downtime. In the beginning we thought it was a misspelt name, that it had to do with the Hyblaean Mountains. Only later we found out that it came from the second biggest Greek island: Euboea.
Fun fact: among the island’s most distinguished residents, Aristoteles, who found shelter here in his last years. The town in which the philosopher died, Chalcis, gave birth to many colonisers directed to Sicily in the 7th century BC. For example, those that founded the town of Lentini 40 km away from Licodia Eubea.
Some people from Chalcis could have founded also Licodia? This question was asked by many historians. For a long time, from the classical era onwards, it was believed that people of Euboea had something to do with this town. In 1871, a municipal resolution embraced this hypothesis and engraved it in the name: Licodia Eubea.
But then, in the early 900s, Paolo Orsi and colleagues came and did the most relevant archeological studies that Sicily has seen. According to this author and the data that came out of the excavation, the town would have been born as a settlement of Sicels and only at a later time entered in contact with Greek colonists from adjacent areas. This progressive exchange of goods, information and culture can be noticed brilliantly at the local town’s museum Antonino di Vita.
Here we found out that the first ceramics of Licodia had local origin, not greek. Some of them represent a special typology. They are the proof of one of the latest manifestations of the indigenous Sicilian culture before integration with the colonists. These ceramics are called “facies of Licodia”. Facies comes from the latin term for “face, aspect”. It’s an archeological term used to define the sum of observable characteristics that allow to group a class of artefacts and distinguish it from the next.
So, has Licodia something to do with people from Eubea? It wouldn’t seem so, at least from the available data. But that doesn’t put an end to the myth. It’s still possible to find many sources describing Licodia Eubea as a possible site founded by people from Chalcis. And in part it’s true, it has clearly displayed cultural influences coming from Chalcidian colonies.
When the legend clashes with the reality, however, we’re often better off keeping the legend.
Many thanks to:
Paolo La Spada, for hosting us in his wonderful village.
Luca Caruso, for showing us around enthusiastically.
Pierfilippo Spoto, for kindly introducing us to these nice people.
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