Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

Abstract:
The systematic studies of cities and territories in Southeastern Sicily started many years ago. Beyond the archaeological surveys, the late antique funerary settlements of Syracuse proposed multiple research cues and paths, as the historical-religious, economic and social nature. The cemeteries distribution (both of private and community law) and topography of funerary monuments in the suburban area, between the 3rd and 5th centuries, reflect well a diversified situation within a few hundred meters radius. To understand that, one needs to take account of the relationship between paganism and Christianity, orthodoxy and heterodoxy (most of all for the 5th century), which is not only a Sicilian problem, even if it is strongly sensed in the island. Our aim is to trace the out-lines for an initial study of how the suburb of Akradina in Syracuse was transformed over time. Over a long period that goes from the classical period to the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages the area underwent interesting and important changes. Over centuries the area underwent changes that modified the original destination. At the beginning of the VI it seems that dhe burial sites was out of use: the last burial of Goti at S. Giovanni belongs to this period. His catacom is of particular interest because it is the only one that has not undergone modifications that would have changed its original form. In the nearby crypt of S. Marciano and the two cemeteries of Vigna Cassia and S. Lucia the areas that were reserved for important burial were transformed into places for religious ceremonies and devotion, for a very long period. A particular focus is dedicated to the city of Catania. Several interest has been given to structural aspect of the catacombs of Sicily: practice of funeral rituals, ethnic and cultural fruition’s characters, transformation in the use, transformation in the way of using spaces for graves, to complete a general point of view about the phenomena of continuity and innovation as to previous sepulchral arrangements and, in the analysed periods, the facies belonging to the different settling, variegated in the committees’ ideological and religious themes, in choosing monumental types (like the rotundae) and decorations, in self-representative aspects, in burial uses.