La ceramica di età bizantina e islamica dagli scavi archeologici di Colle Tirone e Castellaccio di Lentini

This paper reports on some discoveries that took place in the archaeological area of Colle Tirone and Castellaccio di Lentini during the excavation campaign that the Superintendence of Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Syracuse conducted in the years 2005-2006 with funding from the European Union. These are ceramic fragments dated from the Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. They come from a series of essays carried out in both places, which, as was already noted by Paolo Orsi and Giuseppe Agnello who examined the site and its characteristics, are distinguished by an ancient latomia that had to undergo further work in the Middle Ages when it became a real moat in defense of Castrum Vetus (Castellaccio), while another moat detached the latter from the Lastrichello. In the six extensive excavations conducted at Colle Tirone the ceramics of the Islamic age, and of the centuries that preceded it in late antiquity, were found, as well as in the surface soil, in layers of medieval age referable to a cemetery area of the 13th - 14th century and in the northernmost area of the hill, where the foundations and floor plans of a building identified as the Monastery of the Clares survive, in layers prior to the great earthquake of 1693.