This article argues that the eye-catching appearances of Diodorus Siculus’ home town of Agyrium in the Bibliothêkê Historikê—a town otherwise overlooked in the historical record—are not simply acts of self-promotion or aggrandizement. Rather, they were a response to contemporary actions taken by Roman elites against their provincial subjects during Diodorus’ lifetime, which stood in opposition to those behaviours of clemency and moderation that Diodorus portrays as necessary for a just and stable empire. The article analyses the three major appearances of Agyrium in the Bibliothêkê, demonstrating how Diodorus establishes his home town as bearing prosperous agriculture critical to Roman food security, as a ‘city of great renown’ on a par with Syracuse, Carthage and Corinth, and as a pious benefactor to its worthy neighbours. The article concludes that Diodorus’ glorification of Agyrium is an implicit critique of Roman rule during a period of provincial anxiety and civil unrest, in line with his intention that the Bibliothêkê serve as a work of moral utility, within a socio-political context where explicit critique of the Roman political elite was all too dangerous.

During the Archaic and Classical periods, the establishment of Greek colonies in the Mediterranean region resulted in new, hybrid cultures. Weaning and early life diets reflect childhood experiences and cultural transmission. Here, the stable nitrogen and carbon isotopic ratios (δ15N, δ13C) from bone collagen of fifty-eight subadults and twenty-seven adult females from the Greek colony of Himera in Sicily are used to estimate the age of weaning and the nature of complementary foods. Bayesian analysis shows that weaning typically began at 3–4 months and was completed by 3.5–4 years. While a weaning ‘curve’ is detected at Himera, there is much variation, suggesting adherence to some shared norms but also individualized decisions about the diets of infants and children. This study expands our knowledge of Greek childhood and sheds light on the treatment of children within a culturally complex colonial setting.

Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows constitute an important ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea, providing habitat for many species of invertebrates and fishes, some of which produce sounds with distinctive features. Using such sounds to monitor marine habitats is at the core of passive acoustic monitoring. In the Mediterranean, an arched frequency modulation centred around 747 Hz, which aurally sounds like /kwa/, has been investigated as an environmental proxy. Remarkably, these sounds were already noted as a distinctive feature of the soundscape recorded during an early acoustic experiment, USTICA 99 (Ustica, Sicily, Italy), which simultaneously measured photosynthetic gas exchanges and fish migration at the scale of a Posidonia meadow. In this study, we revisit that dataset to describe the specific characteristics of the early recorded /kwa/ sounds and compare them with more recent field studies conducted in French P. oceanica meadows, approximately 500 km north of Ustica and 15 years later. Our comparative analysis confirms a high degree of homogeneity in the /kwa/ sounds, with some variations that are further examined.

The new Italian state first encountered criminal entities in the mafia mould in circumstances characterised by bitter political struggle between the government, its democratic opposition and pro-Bourbon forces. The charge of being ‘mafiosi’ was therefore often used as a weapon. However, the mafia was not an invention of the Right. By examining the attempts to counter a phenomenon that seemed uncontrollable and impervious to the new order, and against which the state realised that it lacked the appropriate means to act, we can discern some of the constituent elements of the ‘industry of violence’, a phrase that Leopoldo Franchetti was to coin only a few years later. This article analyses the early manifestations of a criminal force during the uprisings in early nineteenth-century Sicily, in order to then examine its impact on the institutions of the unified Italian state up to the mid-1870s. Those now in power were discovering unfamiliar situations, with characters who were confident about using violence, and a worrying openness of civil society to its unrestrained use. The authorities responsible for the protection of life and property were ill prepared for confronting this alien associative phenomenon, and were constantly complaining about their isolation and the lack of co-operation from the local population; in the end, they resorted to reaching agreements with organised crime, further damaging trust in the institutions of the newly unified state.

This article discusses the characterization of a shell as labyrinthine in Theodoridas, Anth. Pal. 6.224 (= 3524–9 Gow–Page, HE). It contextualizes the description in relation to a myth about Daedalus on Sicily, Theodoridas’ probable homeland. It then reappraises the implications of the phrase for the aesthetics of the epigram.

This essay deals with the influence of Adam Smith—at the end of the eighteenth century and during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars—on the constitutional projects and public debates through which reformers of southern Europe tried to import and translate British society. I focus on the intellectual filters that affected the reception of Smithian thought, particularly the political and ideological aim to realize a Whig social order, that induced the Mediterranean elite to link the Wealth of Nations with the thought of Edmund Burke and Arthur Young. The result is a moderate and conservative profile of Smithian liberalism that was is in tune with the ideological trend of the nineteenth century.

During the Fascist period, the extractive industry played an important role in Italy’s economic and political landscape, and sulphur was considered the autarkic mineral par excellence. This article reveals how the rhetoric surrounding the vigorous extraction of sulphur in Sicily was part of a larger project of reconstruction and reorganisation, which involved the division of land, reclamation efforts, military operations and colonisation. Drawing on examples of visual and written narratives from public reports, essays, illustrated magazines and exhibitions of the time, the article demonstrates that extraction was both the actual site of resource extraction and the Fascist extractive logic of consensus. The use of specific discourses and definitions enabled and justified the portrayal of humans and lands as extractable resources, creating images and imaginaries that normalised exploitation and transformation, and the regime’s extractive force.

In this paper, we examine cases where radiocarbon (14C) dates are incompatible with dates produced by other established archaeological methods. We present results from nine bones that we sampled from tombs in Phoenician sites in Sicily. These bones produced radiocarbon dates conflicting with established dates of finds in the associated tombs. These discrepancies, particularly in tomb dates, pose a serious problem, as they suggest that the finds may be disconnected from the buried individuals, challenging the fundamental premise of studying excavated tombs. To put our findings in a broader context, we also present other cases of discrepancies found in recent publications and note some common observations throughout these studies. Our questions and observations arise from the significant implications that radiocarbon dating has for our research on Phoenician ancient DNA, as these conflicts impact our understanding of the potential migration and movement of Phoenician people throughout the Mediterranean.

Two alluaudite-group minerals, badalovite, ideally NaNaMg(MgFe3+)(AsO4)3, and calciojohillerite, NaCaMgMg2(AsO4)3, have been identified on a specimen from the Monte Calvario quarry, Biancavilla, Etna volcanic complex, Sicily, Italy. For both species, this finding represents the second world occurrence. The studied sample was characterised using electron microprobe analysis, micro-Raman spectroscopy, and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Badalovite occurs as vitreous to resinous aggregates of yellowish to brownish prismatic crystals, up to 0.5 mm in length, associated with tabular crystals of hematite, pseudobrookite and an amphibole-supergroup mineral. Badalovite is intimately intergrown with minor calciojohillerite. The chemical formulae of these two alluaudite-group members, recalculated on the basis of 12 O atoms per formula unit and assuming the occurrence of Fe3+, are (Na1.74(11)K0.01(1)Ca0.30(8))Ʃ2.05(Mg1.74(2)Mn0.27(2)Ca0.11(8)Zn0.03(1)Fe0.84(14)Al0.02(2))Ʃ3.01(As2.85(4)P0.11(3))Ʃ2.96O12 and (Na1.44(2)K0.01(1)Ca0.66(1))Ʃ2.11(Mg2.27(1)Mn0.28(1)Zn0.01(1)Fe0.48(2))Ʃ3.00(As2.79(3)P0.13(2))Ʃ2.92O12, respectively. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction data collected on badalovite gave the following unit-cell parameters a = 11.9760(5), b = 12.7857(5), c = 6.6650(3) Å, β = 112.689(2)°, V = 941.58(7) Å3, space group C2/c. Its crystal structure was refined to R1 = 0.0257 for 1711 unique reflections with Fo > 4σ(Fo) and 97 least-square parameters. The crystal chemical and spectroscopic data as well as the genesis of badalovite are discussed and a comparison with the Russian type material is reported.

Street signs in Italian, Hebrew and Arabic, installed in the twenty-first century, mark Palermo's former Jewish quarter, over half a millennium since Sicily last had a substantial Jewish population. They recall a medieval Jewish minority, but also symbolise what some consider to be Palermo's essentially pluralistic character. What motivates this inchoate revival of ‘Jewish space’, and what does it mean for contemporary Palermo? ‘Rebranding’ Palermo as a crossroads of civilisations encourages tourism, but this alone does not explain the re-evaluation of its multi-religious heritage. Palermo is an often-overlooked case study for the contemporary emergence of Jewish ‘sites of memory’. Using a micro-scale ethnographic study to analyse a narrative rooted in history, I show how the ‘rediscovery’ of Jewish history can have multiple catalysts. In Palermo, these include a Europe-wide interest in ‘things Jewish’, and Sicily's increasing religious diversity in the present.