Little idols of Camaro (ME)

The card was edited by Barbara Crescimanno

Little idols of Camaro (ME)

The card was edited by Barbara Crescimanno


The site of Camaro S. Anna (ME), located on a terrace overlooking the upper course of the wide Camaro-Zaera river valley, was explored in the 1991s in two different excavation campaigns (1996; 1997-XNUMX). We are located on the first foothills of the Peloritani Mountains, south-west of Messina.

The excavations have brought to light two large hearths with lithic and ceramic materials, two votive dimples filled with fragmented vases, a pit with the burial remains of a young individual, and a paleosoil characterized by plaster mixed with ceramic fragments, bones, lithic industry , and numerous obsidian. The context, the findings and the funerary deposition suggest a cultic and votive type of attendance, rather than a settlement.

The site is made particularly important by the exceptional discovery, in the spaces between the hearths and the dimples, of two lithic idols: Camaro1, of the so-called 'violin' type, made in phyllade; Camaro2, smaller in size and less refined in workmanship, in the shape of a bottle, in quartzite phyllade, a type of schist that is easily traceable in the Peloritani Mountains.

These artifacts, which appear to be made in local stone, constitute exceptional proof of contacts between Sicily and the Aegean-Anatolian world: Camaro1 has a very close typological and stylistic affinity both with specimens from the Cycladic area (Pelos-Lakkoudhes culture, 3200-2700 BC) that with specimens found in Beycesultan (Anatolia) dated to the initial Early Bronze Age (2800-2700 BC); Camaro2 seems closer to a type widespread especially in Paros and Antiparos.

There is therefore evidence of direct relations between this part of Sicily and some areas of the Aegean connected to each other by an important route that crossed the Strait of Messina, through which objects and cultural models of particular meaning and formal value passed. “The possibility, still to be verified, that one or both idols are locally produced could suggest, in our opinion, the existence of non-episodic relationships. […] It is also significant, in a context of very early contacts between the Aegean world and Sicily, that depictions of similar little idols appear in the Cave of Cala dei Genovesi in Levanzo” (Bacci).

After the publication of the Camaro idols, a little idol was presented, coming from Castiglione di Sicilia and most likely of local production, which has great affinities with the Camaro2 and with some of the pictorial representations of the Cave of Levanzo: this find suggests the hypothesis that this type of cult objects were more present in the Sicilian territory than the discoveries published up to now could suggest, confirming Bacci's hypotheses on the existence of non-episodic relationships between the Aegean, Sicily and , as also hypothesized by Tusa, the Maltese archipelago.

Historical notes

The district of Camaro was already known for finds relating to the Hellenistic period; however the area of ​​the Strait, below the levels of the Greek and Roman ages, has extensive prehistoric deposits, a sign of the importance that the area already held for the populations of the time. Strong in this regard are the relationships with the Aeolian cultures.

Between the central Mediterranean, the Aegean and western Anatolia there seems to exist a cultural unity that archaeological discoveries are increasingly highlighting. The Mediterranean was an essential unifying element of a region of villages and, alongside these, of sanctuaries which served as a point of reference for wider territorial communities, making the communities of the Aegean and southern Italy and islands places of exchange of diplomatic relations, trade and cultural and religious practices. These leagues or amphictyons seem to predate the Greek ones, which actively colonized southern Italy and Sicily from the XNUMXth century onwards.

There has long been evidence suggesting the development of contacts between the Aegean and the central Mediterranean, also reaching Cyprus and the Near East, in the late Bronze Age; contacts involving interchange on different levels, not limited to trade contact, but including export industries, advances in mining and smelting, pottery production, and ivory and glass working.

Several cases document these exchanges: among these, the example of the so-called 'globule bones', the first of which was found by Schliemann in Troy. It is a type of object present in the same reference areas concerning the idols analyzed here, and above all in the area of ​​the Castelluccian culture in Sicily, where about twenty examples are known (including several of local manufacture) which have a similar date to that of idols. Globule bones are not objects of practical use, nor has an application for everyday use been found. Several scholars favor use as amulets or talismans, but along the west-to-east shipping route they may also have served as marks of identification or protection in a world where the stranger was protected by the laws of hospitality and related communities. by pacts of friendship or alliance. These objects would then have played the role of the Masonic ring and Rotary pin in the trade of the third millennium BC (Ross Holloway).

CARD

Name

Little idols of Camaro (ME)

Subject

Female figurine

Timeline

All the ceramic evidence found in the area can be classified in the Piano Conte facies (middle Eneolithic, III millennium BC), with comparisons in other Sicilian areas: remains of the Eneolithic culture of Piano Conte have been identified near the Ganzirri lakes (not far from Capo Peloro) and on the Aeolian Islands

Location of discovery

Camaro – Province of Messina

Region

Sicilia

Environmental context

External area

exhibits exhibited

The finds are conserved at the Superintendence of Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Messina, in Viale Boccetta 38, tel. 090-36746498

State of conservation

The 'violin' female idol has gaps both on the bar-shaped head and on the lateral appendages. Good state of conservation

Dimensions:

Camaro 1: height cm. 12 cm wide. 8,8 cm thick. 4; Camaro 2: height 7,3 cm

Legal condition

State property

REFERENCES

  1. Giovanna Maria Bacci – “Two idols of the Aegean-Cycladic type from Camaro Sant'Anna near Messina" - In First Sicily – edited by Sebastiano Tusa 1997 – I p. 295-297 and II p. 70;
  2. Francesco Privitera – “A new Camaro-type idol from Contrada Marca (Castiglione di Sicilia)” - In Proceedings of the XLI scientific meeting. From the cyclops to the ecysts, society and territory in prehistoric and protohistoric Sicily – 2012 – Italian Institute of Prehistory and Protohistory;
  3. Robert Ross Holloway – The Classical Mediterranean, its Prehistoric Past and the Formation of Europe - Online Publication Category: Italian Pre-History – 1997;
  4. Cecilia Albana Buccellato, Emiliano Tufano and Sebastiano Tusa – “A new reading of the paintings of the Cave of Cala dei Genovesi in Levanzo (Trapani)" - in Alpine prehistory – 46 II – Trento 2012 – pp. 119-125.