A nail is driven into the ground and a fire is lit, before re-flooring a room; a few months later a die is rolled on the table, in the same room, and a cheerful voice exclaims of a point won: the life of the ancient Greeks of Akragas slowly resurfaces in the Valley of the Templeswhere excavations are carried out between the temple of Juno and that of Concordia.
The patience of archaeologists, and their care and decision in handling shovels, buckets, brushes, and trowels (the indispensable tool is the trowel, a sort of English trowel with a 10 cm blade and a rhombus-shaped plate, very robust but elastic and with a rounded tip to avoid damaging the finds) bring to light the objects of Greek everyday life, which do not have the spectacular nature of other grandiose discoveries but tell, perhaps more than these, how people lived in the 5th century BC and how we can recognize ourselves in those who preceded us, in their existence.
The nail tells the sacred. The excavation team, directed by the archaeologist Maria Concetta Parello in the Archaeological Park directed by Roberto Sciarratta, found it in the seventh house B. It was under a ceramic cup. “It is a house – explains Parello to AGI – whose final phases conclude at the end of the 5th century BC. It is a building that has a history and like all houses it has seen renovations, restorations, many interventions that have changed the appearance. Every time the Greeks had to move from disorder to order, they intervened with a ritual action. In the Greek world, and also in the Roman one, the ritual wanted to bring about the favor of the gods and was done in the previous moment the start of the restoration or remaking of a part: in our case, a floor that they would soon raise. Having driven the nail, which symbolically seals the moment of the ritual action, they lit a wood fire on it. , probably, of essences; they extinguished it with an overturned cup. In a house like this, the Greeks of the 5th century BC lived their daily lives: these are gestures that tell us about a life in which we can recognize ourselves today”.
“Whoever visits the remains of a city or a museum – Sciarratta, who leads the largest archaeological park in Europe, tells AGI – wants to know, looking at a crater (an ancient vase used to pour wine and water for banquets, ed. ), who the owners of that crater were and what they did, what that city was like in those times. We are fortunate to have found in this excavation area, almost perfectly preserved,. evidence of an era of great vitality, which today we can narrate and show through construction sites open to the public”.
Thus, with the same informative and rigorous approach at the same time, the Park tells ancient history through educational projects for children and teenagers; with il Giadino della Kolymbetrathe landscape and its crops producing products such as wine, oil, flour and, recently, a panettone with candied fruit and almonds from the Valley of the Temples.
“This panettone – says Sciarratta – tells 2,600 years of history“. Since 2019, archaeologists have been focusing on the residential area north of the Via Sacra. “The ancient city stood here and the Roman city did not extend here”, underlines Parello. The research started from some exploratory surveys for the positioning of the new water main: since then scholars have better understood both the topography and urban structure of the city, its organization into blocks, and what was happening between those streets and inside the houses, where much of Greek life took place.
“It was more women – explains the archaeologist, who has been studying the forms of living of the ancient Greeks for several years and is an authoritative and certain point of reference for scholars of the Valley of the Temples – who spent their lives at home, also carrying out activities such as weaving, but men also spent quite a bit of time there.” Sometimes, playing dice. What was found is “a story, this too, of everyday life”.
“The dice game– underlines Parello to AGI – it belonged to the Greek world and we have a representation of it in some vases, among which the most beautiful and famous is that of Exekias, with Achilles and Ajax intent on playing“. The two heroes rolled the dice and competed, relaxing before or after a battle. Thus, in the same way, the inhabitants of Akragas rested “in company”, before or after a hard work, such as the renovation of their house.