The Bronze Age People of Syracuse (Sicily)

Thapsos in southeastern Sicily (9km NW of Syracuse) is the eponymous site for an entire Middle Bronze Age (MBA) culture group spread throughout the island. P. Orsis excavations at Thapsos and other sites in the region during the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided the basic archaeological data that still shape our picture of the 14th cent. BCE on the largest island of the Mediterranean. During the MBA the Sicilian populations had relationships with those living in many other parts of the Bronze Age world, as Maltese, Aegean, Cypriot and Near Eastern artefacts in the cemeteries of southeastern Sicily testify. However, the documentation of undisturbed burials with their grave goods through stratigraphic excavation constitutes an important requirement for the second millennium BCE in Sicily. An area inside the archaeological park at the ancient Neapolis of Syracuse yielded a rock-cut chamber tomb with a rich 14th cent. BCE inventory and a second coeval tomb that had been re-used around the end of the 2nd/beginning of the 1st millennium BCE. A geomagnetic survey conducted in the fall of 2023 detected several magnetic anomalies that are most probably indicating the existence of further tombs. The grave goods of the 14th cent. BCE tomb are closely comparable with those of the rich tombs at Thapsos in terms of eastern Mediterranean imports (e. g. Cypriot and Mycenaean vessels) and variety of local objects (including a vessel with pictorial motifs). Therefore, the Syracuse necropolis offers the possibility to investigate tombs by archaeological excavation in order investigate burial habits, nutrition, living conditions, social structure, economy and Mediterranean contacts of the people living on SE Sicily in the Bronze Age. Archaeological excavation in combination with micromorphological sediment analysis will establish the burial sequences, radiocarbon dates will provide an absolute chronology, local ceramics, metal objects and Mycenaean imports will enable correlations with other areas in and outside Sicily. The biological characteristics of the buried individuals will be investigated by physical anthropology, proteomix sex identification and aDNA studies, nutrition and mobility by stable isotope analyses, kinship relations with the help of social anthropology. Archaeological, chemical and petrographic analyses of metals and ceramics from Syracuse and Thapsos will provide information on production and exchange practices. The combined application of archaeological, bioarchaeological, archaeometric and socio- anthropological approaches to the Syracuse necropolis would make this site and, as a comparative case, also Thapsos exemplary cases for 2nd millennium BCE Sicily. Innovative methods such as proteomic sex identification, laser ablation for gold analysis and the combination of aDNA analyses with socio-anthropological methodology for investigating social kinship relations characterize the project as innovative also in a methodological respect.