Archaeology

The Necropolis
DESCRIPTION: Visit the immense cemetery of Sant 'Angelo Muxaro.
DURATION: half day, 1 or 2 days.
Moments at the highest cultural content, are our archaeological excursions, guided by some of the leading experts in the area. For a complete tour and attentive to hear everything that the expert guides the visitor would be told it would take days for this excursion, they can last, at the discretion of the visitor, half day, full day or two days. On this page of the site will give a brief description of the anticipation and wonder that you'll see during our archaeological excursions.

On the walls of gypsum crystal of the hill of Sant 'Angelo, many graves are found. Most of them are round pseudo-conical dome, called Tholos and recall the construction princely funeral of Mycenaean Greece. Usually contained a large number of corpses (35 skulls were found in a) and what looks like a household or dynastic.

Among these tombs the most monumental is the "Cave of the Prince", formed by two large circular interconnecting rooms, a large front (diameter m 8.8) and the second inner and smaller, it has carved in the rock a funerary bed.

E'chiamata also "Grotta Sant'Angelo", named after the patron saint in the tradition that the cave would have chosen for his hermitage after it is freed from the devil.

Of the several archaeological finds in Sant'Angelo Muxaro is no news since 700, after the private collection of Bishop Lucchesi Palli appeared four cups of gold from this area, two of which are decorated with figures of bulls placed all ' around a central omphalos. Of those objects it is spoken in several writings of travelers that they stopped here, as the Prince of Biscardi (Travel for all the antiquities of Sicily), Baron von Riedesel and the French painter Jean Houel that in addition to describing objects with a design, also refers to the place of discovery "of a found au tombeau, dans un village antique appeal Sant'Angelo aujourd'hui". Thanks again to Houel it was learned that at the time of his visit only one of the cups was present, because the other was sold to an Englishman, moving then to the collection of Lord William Hamilton, ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, for still come and stay at the British Museum.

Around 800 around Sant'Angelo Muxaro assumes a position of particular relevance in the context of the archaeological landscape as Sicilian in the lower part of the hill that is coming at noon as in other neighboring points not just to the mountain of St. Angelo, the farmers instead they dug dozens of graves found objects, vases and priceless archaeological material in number.
The peasants of the place these findings in special baskets loaded with mules and donkeys, along ancient paths and took them to the markets trazzere of Agrigento and Palermo. Many of these items ended up being part of private collections in the museums of other cities. Of particular importance in 1927, was the discovery by one of the farmers santangelesi, a heavy gold ring (32.5 gr.) Now on display at the Regional Museum in Syracuse, oval signet depicting a cow suckling a calf.
The 'center and the importance of the findings aroused the attention of many scholars, first among them Paolo Orsi, the greatest archaeologist of Sicily at that time.
These, after conducting explorations in other indigenous Sicilian necropolis, as Pantalica Cassibile etc. ... and dreamed of being able to explore the area of ​​Sant'Angelo Muxaro. He left, so, a highly successful campaign of excavations, which lasted from 1931 to 1932 and in which the Bears could count on the invaluable collaboration of Umberto Zanotti Bianco. The excavations began on the southeastern part of the hill and in a few weeks unearthed a priceless heritage: pre-protohistoric tombs (V-XII century BC.) Huge, monumental, unparalleled in all of Sicily, rich grave goods and metal.
The most important monuments, is the "Cave of the Prince" or "Cave of St. Angelo."
At the same ridge, was also found a group of six graves tholos, all at the top of the hill. Other twelve, finally, smaller single cave were placed down below the ridge of a "royal dirt road."

Plenty of the material found in these caves.
The tomb bears the same V wrote: "a single cell in the inverted dome with keystone cable mt. 4.60 / 4.75 meters in diameter. 2.95 in height: a double funeral with cozzale gradinetto to small boulders along its length, bed covered with a funeral pall formed by a thin layer of gypsum formed bright and clear with oozing over the centuries, through the smog vitrified s' discern the two bits of rotting skeletons of the other and put one of them to tuck up a rock lying on the bed even more precisely on the decomposed remains of a bed decorated with fiery eyes and die tips of cusps, where a precious relic fragment we arrived to save.
But there was better: the left hand of one of the two deaths, respectively, or to the right of the other, could be seen under a crystal clot, the big and heavy (54.8 grams). Submiceneo ring with the deep notch representation conducted in a very realistic, with his claws of a wolf, with traces of red (maybe they were the seals) in the cable, from which we liked to give this famous tomb of the wolf tribe.
At the foot of a big body and a kotyle salierina ebony black mug and a pot-bellied black bands ".

Within the same grave, certainly the richest, were more than one hundred eighty seven objects found in ceramic vases and numerous wrecks. Anyway, the tombs were found filled with smaller pots, skulls, bones and funerary objects.

In 1976 the Institute of Archaeology, University of Catania under the direction of Prof. John Rizza and in collaboration with the Superintendency of Antiquities of Agrigento resumed research in Sant'Angelo Muxaro and their excavation. One of the excavations at the necropolis, a tomb that allowed him to find "A" still intact. Mt 3,30 / 2.10 meters in diameter and about. Height of 2.10.
On that occasion, were brought to light fifty vases, buckles of bronze and iron and a large number of corpses.
The vessels were found to indigenous production very special and peculiar interest because of their culture and way of pottery the Sant 'Angelo Muxaro.

The necropolis of Monte Sant'Angelo Muxaro represents the outer part of a much larger archaeological site.
It assumes a position to suggest an insurmountable barrier placed to protect a more important area, that of "Monte Castello", on whose summit pianeggiate scholars now agree in placing the seat of the ancient and mythical fortress of Sicani: Kamikos. Here are hundreds of tombs were found, which is tholos oven. The most spectacular are certainly the so-called "Grotticelle" un'alveare of tombs carved into the rock.
From the Castle of Monte also come several important discoveries including the famous ring with the cow suckling her calf.

All archaeological material unearthed from the territory santangelese is now housed in museums Sicarusa, Palermo, Agrigento, while the British Museum in London is the gold cup decorated with six bulls showing changes in the circulation.
The two gold rings, one with the figure of the wolf and the other with the figure of the cow and the cup, are a rare treasure of indigenous gold jewelry manufacturing, with references to Minoan-Mycenaean models.

These gold, along all'incalcolabile amount of archaeological material, the particularity of funerary architecture found in the territory and the call santangelese Aegean environment lead us to the powerful people of the "Sicani".
Just in this valley Sicans managed to strengthen their presence, controlling the traffic of goods and products of vital importance and also being able to monitor the internal lines of communication, like the river Platani, which is pushed from the African coast to the interior Sicily's assuming, therefore, a strategic hub for economic and political balance of those times.

Here Sicans built the capital of their kingdom, the legendary and powerful "Kamikos Kokalos the king", now identified in Sant'Angelo Muxaro.