Niscemi
A modern village on the terraces that dominate the E side of the Geloan Fields. In its environs, and especially on the plain, are numerous traces of settlements of the Iron Age and of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. From somewhere in this area comes a rich deposit of bronze objects datable between the end of the 10th and the 8th c. B.C. The deposit comprises axes, javelin or arrow heads, tips of spits, pieces of daggers and short swords, a razor, and other bronze fragments.
At the foot of the terrace in the Petrusa district, toward the N, a pagus of the late Republican or early Imperial period has been identified but has not yet been excavated. Farther N, on a small hill dominating the E side of the Plain of Gela, in the district of Piano Tenda, a large Hellenistic farm has been found but has not yet been investigated. In the area closer to the territory of Gela, in the district Piano della Camera, another small settlement of Roman Imperial date has been recognized.
All the settlements on the Geloan plain must obviously have belonged to the Plaga Calvisiana (Praedium Calvisianum).
BIBLIOGRAPHYL. Bernabò Brea, La Sicilia prima dei Greci (2d ed., 1960) 189-92; D. Adamesteanu, RendLinc 10 (1955) 200-10.
D. ADAMESTEANU