Archeologia dei paesaggi: il territorio di Licata (AG) e la bassa valle dell'Himera meridionale

The contribution presents a summary of the methodology and preliminary results of the research project Finziade and Lower Valley of Southern Himera of the Department of Ancient and Modern Civilisations, University of Messina. The goal of this project was to reconstruct how the territory of Licata (AG) on the southern coast of Sicily was settled. The area is of significant importance in the process of colonisation of the island since it is at the mouth of the main river. Monte Sant'Angelo, where the Hellenistic city of Finziade was found, was the subject of systematic investigations and monographic studies by the University of Messina. A recent analysis (2010-2012) of the so-called "Mountain", the range of hills around Finziade, was the subject of a doctoral project (in press) that presented a detailed representation of the area's settlement dynamic from prehistory to Late Antiquity. In 2012, on the basis of the new research, it was decided to expand the framework of the investigation by analysing the vast plains and the hills surrounding the "Mountain". This research allows us to make the first historic assessment and settlement models, both relating to the period before the foundation of Finziade (282 BC) and for the later periods. The greatest population density is recorded in the "Castellucciana Age", in the first half of the second millennium BC and later, after the foundation of Agrigento, with numerous nuclei of a non-urban nature, and in the early Hellenistic period with numerous rural and military settlements, among which emerge the two fortified towns of Monte Sole and Poggio Marcato d'Agnone. Important is the finding of several new areas containing clay fragments of the Imperial Era and Late Antiquity, probably due to rural villages or production centres. These villages, probably following a long tradition, exploited the fertile soil and used the port at the mouth of the Himera River, as remembered in the land and sea routes from the Late Roman period.