Grammichele
Ca. 6.4 km NW of Grammichele in the Terravecchia district are the remains of a substantial town of the 6th-3d c. B.C. The settlement lies at the very edge of the Heraian hills on four defensible hilltops, overlooking the valley of the river Caltagirone where the town's fields must have been. Early Iron Age habitation is indicated by a necropolis in the Madonna del Piano district, an elevated plateau at the foot of the four hills. The settlement belongs to an early phase of the Cassibile culture (ca. 1000-850 B.C.) and is associated with the Ausonian habitation at Lipari and Milazzo by the unusual burials (both pithos and fossa graves). The tombs contain some of the earliest iron yet found in Sicily, in the form of finger rings. Later, chamber tombs were cut into the slopes. Greek occupation of the hilltops began about 600 B.C.; the earliest remains are architectural terracottas. No buildings have been excavated. In the upper slopes of the easternmost hill (Poggio dell'Aquila) were found favissae of a Sanctuary of Persephone; they include a fine series of Severe Style terracotta busts. Another earlier favissa at Madonna del Piano contained a seated terracotta goddess and a fragmentary kouros. These finds indicate a Greek population, perhaps of Chalkidian origin; Leontinoi is the closest city. An indigenous substratum is indicated by Sikel pottery in contemporary tombs. The site has been identified on tenuous evidence as Echetla (Diod. 20.32.1; Polyb. 1.15.10); it was inhabited until 1693, when the town, called Occhiolà, was destroyed by earthquake. The finds are mostly in Syracuse; the recently excavated Iron Age material is at present in Lentini.
BIBLIOGRAPHYP. Orsi, “D'una città greca a Terravecchia,” MonAnt 7 (1897) 201-74MPI; id., “Anathemata di una città siculo-greca,” MonAnt 18 (1908) 121-74; id., BPI (1905) 96ff; id., NSc (1920) 336f; E. D. Van Buren, Archaic Fictile Revetments in Sicily and Magna Graecia (1923) 21, 137. Gianformaggio, Occhiolà (1928); T. J. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks (Oxford, 1948) 122-25; L. Bernabò Brea, Sicily before the Greeks (New York, 1960) 164f, 170; id. et al., NSc (1969) 210-76.
M. BELL