Sicily

Each chamber contained many skeletons, in one case no less than twenty-six. They were invariably buried in the squatting position, accompanied by a small number of weapons and orna ments and a regular equipment of pottery. It seems that the idea was to seat them as at a banquet, with large jars beside them to hold water, and smaller decorated cups out of which to drink it. The weapons and implements were sometimes of stone, especially flint, sometimes of copper in primitive forms as if the Neolithic period was only just past and hardly forgotten. Of personal orna ments there were few. Of pottery, all hand-made, there were three kinds, viz., a rough household ware, pots of a better clay coated with a red or yellow slip and—far the most important—a ware covered either with a cream-coloured or dark-red slip on which very simple geometric patterns were executed in dark-brown. This painted ware is the peculiar distinction of the first period. Nothing very closely resembling it is known anywhere else.

A curious fact is that an elaborately carved bone ornament found at Castelluccio is so nearly identical with one found in the second city of Hissarlik that the two must have had a common origin.

The Second Siculan Period.

The second Siculan period of the full bronze age is represented at its best by the cemeteries of Plemmirio, Milocca, Cozzo Pantano and Thapsos close to Syra cuse, and by Caldare and Cannatello near Girgenti. All these con tain Mycenaean imports, of which the earliest are clearly to be dated as late Minoan third period. (See AEGEAN CIVILIZATION.) Bronze swords from the same sites are also quite definitely of Mycenaean origin, and prove the existence of a considerable direct trade with the Aegean. To Aegean influence is probably due the remarkable development in tomb-construction which characterizes the second Siculan. All the cemeteries consist of rock-hewn tombs ; the construction is no more than a natural and logical evolution from the rock-tombs of the first Siculan. The roof of the chamber is sometimes of tholos form, which again recalls Aegean precedents. Inside it is usually elliptical; a raised bench cut in the rock runs round it, and niches are often hewn in the walls. Within this chamber the dead were buried as if seated at a stately banquet with the finest products of Sicilian potters for their table service and the rarest of foreign drinking cups. The size of the great food-basins is remarkable ; they are often two and a half or three feet in height.

The native pottery is made principally in a grey-faced ware ornamented with moulded strips or with a few sparsely incised lines ; there is also a yellow-faced ware. Painted ware is unknown,

The shapes are very few—a high stand, a biconical cup with side handles, a conical cup, a jug and one or two large water jars. Foreign trade added the amphora, pyxis, pedestalled cup and stir rup-handled vase, and gave a great impetus to metal-working. Swords, daggers and even basins were imported, but the various hoards of bronze objects show that a great quantity of native work must have existed. The tombs, however, were systematically ransacked for metals, after the Roman time. Another proof of foreign influence is the introduction of the fibula, which appears at Cozzo Pantano for the first time. The earliest fibulae are of two types, the plain violin-bow with bamboo-knots and the harp shaped or elbowed fibula, each made in a very massive form.

These four cemeteries near Syracuse must be assigned on the evidence of the foreign imports to the 14th and 13th centuries B.c. Caldare and Cannatello, further inland, date from the i2th to I ith centuries. Latest of all, and marking the last stage of the bronze age, is Cassibile, a large cemetery near Syracuse, in which there were no Mycenaean products and the fibulae were percep tibly less archaic.

Intermediary Period.

Next in chronological order come four sites between Syracuse and Girgenti which span the gap between the bronze and iron ages, the later graves in them belonging entirely to the early iron age. On Orsi's system they are to be classed as intermediate between the second and the third Siculan. These are Pantalica, Grammichele, Caltagirone and Monte Dessueri. Here the form of the tomb is already beginning to be modified, the number of burials in each grave is smaller, and the tomb-furniture is later in character. This is especially perceptible in the personal ornaments ; the fibulae have quite changed, for in place of the primitive violin-bow the simple rounded bow is predominant and more sophisticated forms, like the eyed harp-fibula, begin to appear.

In addition to arm-rings and finger-rings and mirrors of bronze there are now found, though rarely, gold-rings, silver armlets and silver rings. Rectangular bronze "razors" come into use, like those known in Italy but of different origin. There are no weapons, perhaps owing to the rifling of the graves, but flame-shaped and leaf-shaped bronze knives occur. The native pottery is very varied in form at this time, the best of it being in a ware faced with red haematite. Feather-patterned ware soon goes out of fashion; the impulse towards originality is killed by a fondness for geo metrically painted wares, the products of new Greek schools. These begin to appear sporadically about goo B.C.