Dopo i paesaggi delle ville: nuove dinamiche insediative e siti d’altura nel mondo rurale della Sicilia tardoantica, bizantina ed islamica (V – X/XI sec.)

This paper aims to propose a general framework on settlement dynamics and the formation of hill-top or fortified sites in the Sicilian countryside between the end of the villas and the Islamic period (5th-10th/11th c. AD). The so-called ‘sistema agrario tardoantico’ characterized Sicily in an exemplary way, making it one of the Mediterranean regions in which it is better to read the material evidence of the wealth of senatorial aristocracies and the development of large secondary agglomerations (villages/vici). This golden age of possessores and their villas began to undergo profound changes as early as the 5th century, a moment of significant transition in which perhaps the first cases of re-occupation of sites began in a position more perched than the pattern of valley / plain of the Roman period. In Sicily, however, there are still few and dubious data on the presence of fortified sites from the Late Antiquity to be connected with certainty to the period of insecurity, mainly due to the incursions of the Vandals. In the archaeological literature on post-Roman Sicily, however, it is the Byzantine period, and in particular the thematic age (late 7th-9th c. AD), which was characterized by more consistent phenomena of public power investments in the construction of castra in the rural area. Even the written sources of the long Islamic conquest of the island (AD 827-902) attest to the presence of many hill-top of fortified sites. The archeology of the Islamic presence in Sicily has made significant progress in recent years allowing for better outlining the settlement patterns between the end of the 9th and the 11th c. AD. Despite this, the data on possible pre-Norman hill-top/fortified sites still remain rather uncertain awaiting future in-depth research.