The vast necropolises of Molino della Badia and the Madonna del Piano district (Grammichele, Catania), dating back to a period between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Sicilian Iron Age (11th-9th century BC), they differ from all the other necropolises of the same one faces (see Fig. 1): Bernabò Brea defines them as one of the most singular and "abnormal" complexes brought to light.
What is striking first of all are the funerary rituals, different from those present in Sicily in this historical phase: in fact we find numerous burials in enchytrismos (i.e. clay situlae or large amphorae in which child and adult skeletons were contained, in a crouched position, respectively) alongside dozens of inhumations in simple pits dug in the bare earth (see Fig. 2). The latter, shallow, have sides lined with lithic slabs which in some cases protected only the skull and ribcage, and housed bodies lying supine covered by thin sandstone slabs. A stone was often placed under the skulls as a pillow.
The use of individual burials, unlike the multiple depositions within artificial caves characteristic of the Sicilian Eneolithic, denotes "a specific structure of a tribal society” (Albanese Procelli, 1992 page 44).
The inhumation curled up a enchytrismos – within a clay container – it is a burial practice limited to a few areas of north-eastern and eastern Sicily at least for the entire Early Bronze Age; It seems to have Anatolian origins and is probably received by the local communities through the mediation of the Aegean communities.
However, we have no evidence for supine burials in bare earth in Bronze and Iron Age Sicily, except here in Molino della Badia - Madonna del Piano: this type of grave deposition seems typical of the cultures of central-southern Italy of the early Iron Age, with the most precise evidence from the Calabrian area.
These are therefore necropolises with a mixed rite: on the one hand they show a clear influence of facies Ausonia of direct origin from Lipari (this is suggested by the co-presence of the use ofenchytrismos associated with the use of the situliform vessel); on the other hand, the co-presence of incineration (the oldest rite, however characterized here by the use of amphorae and urns as cineraries, and burial in pits) indicates the influence of Italian communities. A meeting of populations that gives life to a new one facies, called by Albanese Procelli “del Mulino della Badia”. Its first installation is placed at the end of Final Bronze Age 2, i.e. in the middle of Ausonio II (see Fig. 3).
Another notable element of this necropolis, however, is the grave goods, in which a very particular set of objects was selected to represent the social identity of the deceased.
The ceramic forms are not very varied, almost all with a typically "Sicilian" feathered or monochrome decoration; on the other hand, in the grave goods of ALMOST ALL the tombs, at least one metallic object (especially bronzes, in the form of elements of personal ornament or clothing, or utensils) is attested, which in some cases seems to recall further connections with the peninsula, while in others it reports instead to faces Sicilian of Cassibile (see historical notes) and - as for the burials a enchytrismos – in Lipari.
Among the approximately 350 inhumations found, several female graves appear to be particularly rich. The simplest combination found in the grave goods includes a fibula, a knife and a spindle: an ornamental object and two work tools.
The spindle is a typically female object linked to spinning and weaving activities, while knives are a less usual object in women's trousseau. Several dozen have been found in bronze (and in two cases - tombs 146b and 229 - in iron), in different typologies: "flame" (originating from the Aegean environment) or "olive leaf" (characteristic of the phase of Cassibile) and usually hanging from the belt; some examples are of excellent quality and notable workmanship, with blades decorated with engraved lines or with bone or ivory handles.
More generally, numerous bronze ornaments have been found: alongside several dozen fibulae decorated or engraved in different ways, we have studs, small and large rings, anklets or cylindrical spiral necklaces, earrings, pendants in the form of double spirals, an armilla (metal bracelet), concave-convex disks perforated in the center and bronze rods with opposite perforated ends (see Fig. 4) which, according to Orsi's hypothesis, must have been work tools for spinning as they «(…) the textile fiber was passed through the holes to obtain a thread of constant thickness» (quoted by Bernabò Brea et alii, 1969 page 238).
To further enrich the female funerary objects, there are also other objects for spinning and weaving: clay spiral spindles (8), spools of various sizes (5), numerous needles (11) and loom weights as well as bone combs and ivory, hollow bone cylinders: typical objects of the most richly endowed tombs. One of the richest and most complex grave goods is that, for example, present in tomb 150b, in which there is also a bone pin, a necklace with beads of amber and glass paste, a zoomorphic pendant and - above all - a musical instrument.
In fact, in addition to testifying to evident wealth probably linked to a specific social rank and a role of prestige (objects in precious materials such as bronze, glass, amber, ivory are typical of the tombs of elite figures), we are interested here in pointing out some particular finds in bronze in the form of metal pectorals, present in at least one dozen graves of adult women: it is a rudimentary form of chalcophone (i.e. an idiophone - a musical instrument whose sound is produced by vibrating or percussing the material from which it is made - in this case bronze); these tools, generically called “tintinnabula” (“small bells”), are made up of tubular bells in the form of cylinders or tubes in metal foil hung under a perforated bar and suspended from a chain of bronze rings (see Fig. 5): they were probably worn as pectorals hanging from the neck via the chain of rings, at one end of which a small bell was found in some cases, in others a zoomorphic pendant in the shape of a bovid (sepulchres 150b, 197 and 251); these instruments are sometimes associated with metal rattles and with cylindrical bone or ivory rods (with a bronze core), perhaps used as strikers; in at least one case, along with a pair of spiral anklets.
Some parts of the instrument must have been made of perishable material, as suggested by some wooden or textile fiber fragments inside the studs or metal coils.
I tintinnabula Sicilians found in Molino della Badia are dated to the second half of the 10th century. BC and appear to be the precursors or prototypes of other examples of more elaborate metal tools in southern Italy, at least half a century more recent.
The chalcophones were built with a sound and rhythmic purpose, and were played differently depending on the construction model: the Sicilian models - among the oldest - seem designed to produce sounds in association with the body movements of the woman who wore them .
Bronze is an alloy composed mainly of copper enriched with tin in variable percentages - usually up to 8-9% - depending on the characteristics you want to obtain; sometimes it can also be alloyed to other metals to obtain greater hardness, ease of plastic processing, a different color or other characteristics.
Among the chalcophones found, some of the specimens are made up of cylinders of different sizes with the aim of producing sounds of different tones (like modern wind bells or sheep bells). Archaeometallurgy analyzes on the finds from Molino della Badia reveal that in the metal that makes up the tintinnabula there is a percentage of tin between 11 and 15%, unusually high for copper-based alloys.
As Saltini Semerari points out, “a high percentage of tin in an alloy makes the object more fragile, but it also improves its sound, making it more 'loud and ringing' and less deaf”; therefore, those who worked metal at Molino della Badia between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age possessed high-level skills, which allowed them to calibrate the metal percentages within an alloy depending on the function that the object had to perform. have and the sound you wanted to achieve. The patina of the finds suggests that the tubules were also carefully polished.
Other particularly evocative bronze artefacts found in Molino della Badia are some ornaments in the form of spoked wheels, identified (by their position within the inhumations, or by comparison with other funerary contexts in southern Italy) as belt pendants; these artefacts in the shape of flat rings (single or concentric) with internal or external crosses (see Fig. 6) have been found in some tombs (as well as in erratic finds), and in at least two cases in association with the tintinnabula; these are objects that seem to have both an ornamental and a sound function at the same time, which seem to have been both apotropaic amulets and status symbol.
“Wheel” belt ornaments have an even higher tin content than tintinnabula, reaching up to 17%: the highest percentage found among the artefacts of the necropolis. Bronze objects of this type, if struck against each other, emit a crystalline sound; in the Roman period alloys of this type were used for the production of bells and rattles.
I tintinnabula and belt ornaments therefore represent peculiar objects due to their metallurgical characteristics; being the artefacts of the necropolis with the highest tin content made them extremely precious due to the greater difficulties of supplying the metal - which had to be imported into Sicily - and its high costs compared to locally produced lead. The bronze craftsmen of Madonna del Piano, where there was undoubtedly an important workshop, made precise choices in their creation, deliberately calibrating them to obtain specific characteristics (in addition to the sound, also a particular silver or golden colour).
However, these objects also had to be important for their symbolic character, drawing the attention of the people present at the ceremonies to both the physical presence and the sound presence of the bearer: these elaborate objects, produced with extreme care, had to have a particular meaning and function ceremonial, ritual and perhaps apotropaic.
The interesting question for us is that both the "wheel" ornaments and the chalcophones are always associated with female burials, of adult women of high rank and great wealth, accompanied by the goods and objects typical of the elites of the Bronze Age and of Iron.
«The complex of objects found [in the tombs of Molino della Badia], some of which are real "sonic jewels", contributes to advancing the hypothesis that, through movement and dance, these instruments should give the wearer the appearance of a "rattle-woman" (Bella).
We can therefore hypothesize that the production of sound during dance was a practice practiced by a selected group of women from the Molino della Badia community; we can still assume that dance performances accompanied by rhythmic instruments must have been a key moment of community life.
The chalcophones were a musical instrument but also a symbolic one: the material expression of such a profound relationship between the instrument and the player that it was buried together with the owner, never to be played again by anyone other than her (in a context in which the objects of precious metal no longer used were usually recycled and melted into new shapes).
The presence of multiple sound objects allows us to support the possibility that the women who held them were musicians or dancers in public holidays or ritual ceremonies, if not priestesses, to whom the cult objects were entrusted. The type of music and dance and the occasions on which they took place remain unknown, ceremonies whose characteristics unfortunately escape us.
Below are the funerary objects of some female tombs inside the Necropolis.
FEMALE TOMB N. T5, to enchytrismos (see Fig. 7 and 8); The pithos which housed the skeleton was surrounded by stones and with a mouth to the E-SE. The body is placed inside the pithos in lower semi-dorsal decubitus position. The tomb contained as grave goods:
- a bimetallic digital ring made of iron and bronze;
- a bronze wire earring;
- a fibula with an elbow bow;
- un knife with flame blade and ring handle;
- a bronze spool with engraved wolf's teeth ornamentation;
- a bronze needle, missing the eye;
- a bronze ribbon (see Fig. 9) with pointed and z-bent ends with 16 aligned holes (length 11 cm, width 1,3 cm);
- 16 tubular bells (see Fig. 10) in bronze foil (length 9 cm);
- 36 bronze wire rings;
- a bronze bell;
- 26 concave-convex studs with internal ring, bearing traces of vegetable fiber in one case;
- fragments of an ivory comb with graffitied concentric circles;
- a fragmentary tankard;
- a biconical clay spindle.
"Near the right hand, [he was] a kind of musical instrument made up of a bundle of 16 tubes, to the north of which was a bronze strip with 16 holes; a series of rings then began which reached the base of the ribs where they formed a circle (diam. 20 cm) near which there was a small bell, while other rings reached up to the height of the collarbone. It therefore seems that the instrument was suspended from a chain at the end of which was the bell. Between the tibia and the tubes there is a trapezoidal area (6 cm larger base; 4 cm smaller base; height 14 cm) in which small studs were neatly arranged” (L. Bernabò Brea, E. Militello and S. La Piana, 1969, p. 253).
FEMALE TOMB N. T6, to enchytrismos (see Fig. 11 and 12), protected by stones and with a mouth to the east. The body is in lower dorsal recumbency with limbs extended. The report of fragments of the skull at the height of the pelvis and the localization of the two fibulae on the sides of the skull speak of a flexure at the height of the solar plexus. The kit consisted of:
- a bronze digital ring on the right hand, near the knee;
- a fibula with a simple arch and one with an elbow arch on the right and left of the skull;
- a spool with a ring of twisted bronze wire next to it on the right femur;
- un knife flame with flat handle covered in ivory;
- a bronze needle;
- a group of tubular bells crumpled in bronze foil (average length 11 cm), with 13 bronze wire rings;
- un belt pendant bronze made up of two concentric circles joined by four cross-shaped rays (diameter 7 cm);
- fragments of an ivory comb decorated with groups of five or three concentric circles engraved near the right femur;
- a cylindrical ivory rod with a bronze core near the right arm (diameter 1 cm, length 12,6 cm);
- 47 bronze studs with internal ring, and with traces of three-strand linen thread;
- a clay mug next to the left knee.
FEMALE TOMB N. T39, buried in pithos (height 140 cm, max. diameter 95 cm) closed by a situliform olla with a mouth facing E-SE, with the skeleton curled up on the left side, with limbs flexed by approximately 45° and the head towards the mouth of the vase (see Fig . 13). The tomb (preserved in the Lentini Museum) contained:
- a necklace of cylindrical bronze wire spirals at the neck;
- a digital ring with bronze ribbon with a triangular section;
- a hoop earring;
- a bronze fibula with a simple quadrangular arch;
- a bronze fibula with a simple threaded bow;
- a spool with a bronze ring just below the pelvis;
- 15 tubular bells in bronze foil;
- a bronze strip with holes and pointed ends bent to z;
- 21 bronze wire loops;
- 19 concave-convex studs with internal ring;
- 4 pairs of spirals in bronze wire;
- bronze rod with square section (length 10 cm);
- cylindrical ivory handle with square section bronze core (length 11 cm);
- a biconical clay spindle near the knee;
- a oinochoe spheroidal (height 20 cm, max diameter 13 cm).













Historical Notes
In 1897 Paolo Orsi published the report of a long series of explorations carried out in the territory of Grammichele (the medieval Occhiolà, in the province of Catania), where he had been attracted by the frequent occurrence of notable fortuitous discoveries. The results of Orsi's investigations concern the identification of the remains of a vast settlement from the Hellenistic and Roman ages on the hills of Terravecchia, the location of groups of tombs in the valleys that divide the reliefs and finally, the discovery of a sanctuary, probably extra -urban, of the archaic and classical age, on Poggio dell'Aquila east of the acropolis. In this place, during agricultural work, masses of clay material, especially terracottas, had come to light, deposited inside caves opened horizontally in the layers of friable sandstone along the southern edge of the hill. Among the material found, now preserved in the Syracuse Museum, is a large clay statue of a seated divinity, of indigenous workmanship (XNUMXth - XNUMXth century BC), called the "goddess of Grammichele".
It was in 1905 that Orsi reported the singular prehistoric necropolis discovered a few years earlier near Grammichele, in a place he called Molino della Badia; a few years later, other tombs were found by farmers in the nearby Madonna del Piano district, a natural terrace on the northern slopes of the Terravecchia hills where today stands the sanctuary dedicated to the Madonna del Piano of the same name: here inhumations with bronzes of the same type as the Badia were found . Most of the tombs of Molino della Badia (at least 25) were tampered with and looted; only some of them (2 burials in pits, 11 in cists and 1 ad enchytrismos) were systematically excavated by Orsi, who recovered part of the stolen bronzes by paying compensation to the locals who had found them and kept them for themselves.
«By dint of investigating, I discovered that for years and years the peasants had come across beautiful Sicilian bronze objects, more rarely in rustic pottery, which accompanied skeletons buried in the bare ground; all this had been neglected, reduced to pieces, sold for metal to be melted or made a plaything for children, until, given the voice by me, they began to collect (...)" (P. Orsi, 1905, page 100). The excavations in the area were resumed only in 1959, at the insistence of the Grammichelese scholar Scolastica Umana-La Piana, to whom Bernabò-Brea (then Superintendent of Antiquities of Eastern Sicily) entrusted the excavation, in collaboration with Elio Militello. The identification of the site indicated by Orsi, however, initially presented some difficulties due to the transformations of the toponymy he used. In March 1959, the first of 47 new tombs which would then be explored in the area was discovered in the Madonna del Piano district (40 enchytrismoi and 7 grave burials, plus the so-called Well Tomb).
In 1970 and 1971 other excavations in the Mulino della Badia necropolis led to the exploration of 276 new burials, in which another 10 were found tintinnabula. Albanese Procelli reports that «(...) in cases where it has been possible to ascertain it, the deceased is lying inside the container in a curled up position, with his knees bent. Usually the skull is towards the mouth of the container, therefore mostly towards the East." Among the tombs studied, only two of them (tt. 26 and 34) seem to belong to "warriors", and are recognized as among the oldest in the burial ground, and attributed to the 26th century. B.C; according to Albanese Procelli, the person buried in t. 1992 could be one of the first immigrants to arrive to start the local settlement (RM Albanese Procelli, 35, pages 51 and 174); a single deposition in the entire necropolis is within a sarcophagus (t. 12); 1974 new graves were studied in 350. The graves found so far are approximately XNUMX.
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