Morgantina, Sicily: the worked bone and ivory objects 459 B.C. to the first century A.D.

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to prepare a publishable catalog of more than six hundred unpublished worked bone and ivory artifacts unearthed in successive archeological excavations of the second city of Morgantina, Sicily, beginning in 1955 and continuing until the present time. To accomplish this, it was necessary to examine all these bone and ivory objects, to assess them in terms of relationship to the larger Greek koine of the Mediterranean basin, to categorize and describe them in detail, and to photograph them. Morgantina, an inland Greek colony dating from the second quarter of the sixth century B.C., flowered after destruction by fire in 459 B.C. at the hands of an indigenous leader, Ducetius, and continued to flourish during the Hellenistic era. The city was captured in 211 B.C., during the Roman invasion and conquest of Syracuse. The city survived in diminished form from 211 B.C. to the mid-first century A.D. Most of the bone and ivory objects cannot be dated more closely than the period 459 B.C., the date of the destruction by fire, to the first century A.D., when the city disappeared. The Morgantina artifacts which are the subject to of this dissertation consist largely of items for daily use, such as utensils for personal grooming and jewelry for personal adornment, implements for writing, tools for a variety of purposes, handles, hinges and other structural and decorative components for furniture, game pieces, and miscellaneous pieces of uncertain application. From study of these objects, one can conclude that all conform substantially to similar worked bone and ivory objects found throughout the wide geographical area constituting the Greek world prior to the first century A.D. The Morgantina objects evidence strong connections to that Greek world, even with locales which could be considered far-flung geographically and temporally. They do not, however, demonstrate the cultural flowering which other categories of artifacts from the city reflect.

Ph. D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Cynthia M. Jacob