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Excavation

  • Castellazzo
  • San Cipirello – San Giuseppe Jato
  •  
  • Italy
  • Sicily
  • Province of Palermo
  • San Giuseppe Jato

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Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • The 2013 excavations on the plateau documented the distribution of the rooms inside the smaller curtain wall of Byzantine origin (Area I). The layers abutting the western curtain wall and inside room F were excavated down to natural. The investigations were mainly concentrated on the highest point of the site (Area I) surrounded by the smaller of the two concentric curtain walls, the largest of which stands at a lower level (Area II).

    The following were investigated in Area I:
    Sectors C6-7, underlying the extension to the Norman church; D6, trench deepened in 2012 and extended in 2013 towards the eastern fortifications (USM 1000), D-E-F7 corresponding with a part of the south room in building F, in synthesis three flanking rooms forming an integral part of the same building.
    The trench relating to sector C6-7 was excavated down to natural. The latest levels (Period VI = Federician period, XIII) contained numerous pottery and bone fragments attesting the room’s use as a midden, the dumps lying on the original lime floor of proto-Swabian date (Period V, final decade of the 12th- early 13th century). The spaces in the uneven rock surface under the floor had been filled in order to lay the floor and below which, filling the hollows, were found several layers dating to the protohistoric period (Period I).

    In the adjacent trench, continuation of the excavation confirmed the stratigraphy previously documented there: 26 fishing weights, a bowl with a strainer and several amphora fragments with incised decoration on the shoulders dating to the Norman period (Period IV) were found.
    A lime floor surface covered a layer of uniform stones that levelled the bedrock. Another posthole was found among the stones.

    Lastly, a new trench was opened in sector D-E-F 5,6, a space delimited by walls on two sides (west perimeter wall of room F and to the north a later internal dividing wall).

    A collapse overlay a lime floor cut in the southern part by three small postholes close to which was a layer of charcoal bordered by stones, which contained fragments of pottery painted with red bands or with incised decoration.
    In the central part of the trench, a new layer emerged characterised by the presence of ash and charcoal. Lower down, this continued in the fill of another large posthole, probably of Byzantine date (Period III) that was flanked by occupation levels.

    A large number of finds were recovered whose variety of form, use, and function is significant.
    The faunal and botanical remains also furthered knowledge in the fields of archeo-botany and archeo-zoology.

  • Antonio Alfano 

Director

  • Ferdinando Maurici

Team

  • Gruppo Archeologico Valle dello Jato
  • Pàropos Società Cooperativa

Research Body

  • Parco Archeologico di Iato

Funding Body

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