Archaeological data on the foundation of Megara Hyblaea. Certainties and hypotheses

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Archaeological data on the foundation of Megara Hyblaea. Certainties and hypotheses

Henri Tréziny

To cite this version:

Henri Tréziny. Archaeological data on the foundation of Megara Hyblaea. Certainties and hypotheses

. DONNELAN L.; NIZZO V.; BURGERS G.-J. Conceptualising early Colonisation, Brepols, pp.167-

178, 2016, 978-90-74461-82-5. �halshs-01434820�

bruxelles - brussel - roma belgisch historisch instituut te rome

institut historique belge de rome istituto storico belga di roma

2016

conceptualising early colonisation

lieve donnellan, ed.

Valentino nizzo gert-Jan burgers

98110_Donnellan_voorwerk.indd 3 17/03/16 09:45

© 2016 ihbr - bhir

no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without written permission of the copyright owner.

d/2016/351/2

isbn 978-90-74461-82-5

98110_Donnellan_voorwerk.indd 4 17/03/16 09:45

Table of content

Acknowledgments ... 7

l. donnellan & V. nizzo, Conceptualising early Greek colonisation. Introduction to the volume ... 9

r. osborne, Greek ‘colonisation’: what was, and what is, at stake? ... 21

i. malkin, Greek colonisation: The Right to Return ... 27

J. hall, Quanto c’è di “greco” nella “colonizzazione greca”? ... 51

a. esposito & a. Pollini, Postcolonialism from America to Magna Graecia... 61

g. saltini semerari, Greek-Indigenous intermarriage: a gendered perspective ... 77

r. Étienne, Connectivité et croissance : deux clés pour le VIII ^e s.? ... 89

F. de angelis, e pluribus unum: The Multiplicity of Models ... 97

V. nizzo, tempus fugit. Datare e interpretare la “prima colonizzazione”: una riflessione “retro- spettiva” e “prospettiva” su cronologie, culture e contesti ... 105

m. cuozzo & c. Pellegrino, Culture meticce, identità etnica, dinamiche di conservatorismo e resistenza: questioni teoriche e casi di studio dalla Campania ... 117

o. morris, Indigenous networks, hierarchies of connectivity and early colonisation in Iron Age Campania ... 137

l. donnellan, A networked view on ‘Euboean’ colonisation ... 149

h. tréziny, Archaeological data on the foundation of Megara Hyblaea. Certainties and hypo- theses ... 167

F. Frisone, ‘Sistemi’ coloniali e definizioni identitarie: le ‘colonie sorelle’ della Sicilia orientale e della Calabria meridionale ... 179

e. greco, Su alcune analogie (strutturali?) nell’organizzazione dello spazio : il caso delle città achee ... 197

d. Yntema, Greek groups in southeast Italy during the Iron Age ... 209

g.-J. burgers & J.P. crielaard, The Migrant’s Identity. ‘Greeks’ and ‘Natives’ at L’Amastuola, Southern Italy ... 225

P.g. guzzo, Osservazioni finali ... 239

m. gras, Observations finales ... 243

98110_Donnellan_voorwerk.indd 5 17/03/16 09:45

1 Recent overview in Tréziny, ‘Grecs et Indigènes’.

Le texte est un résumé des principaux apports des publications des fouilles de Mégara Hyblaea, revus à la lumière de travaux récents encore inédits. Le plan d’urbanisme de MH est structuré sur deux grandes rues Est- Ouest, A et B, dont nous savons aujourd’hui qu’elles sont parfaitement rectilignes de l’Agora à la fortification occidentale. Aucune des deux ne semble directement en relation avec la porte Ouest. Les lots (oikopeda) sur les- quels sont construites les maisons sont à peu près égaux. La mise en place du plan d’urba- nisme est un acte cohérent, qui comprend aussi l’agora et se date vers la fin du VIII ^e s.

même si la documentation archéologique est encore très partielle pour la moitié Ouest du site. On suppose dans la deuxième moitié du VIII ^e s. une phase préalable à la mise en place du plan, que l’on appelle « phase des campe- ments ». L’espace urbain est séparé du terri- toire (chora) par une fortification construite entre la fin du VIII ^e et le milieu du VII ^e s. av.

J.-C. Dans la chora, les tombes les plus anciennes (deuxième moitié du VIII ^e s.) semblent déjà occuper l’emplacement des nécropoles archaïques.

Megara Hyblaea was founded, according to Thucydides around 728 BC, some twenty

kilometres to the North of Syracuse, on a coastal site, almost completely flat. According to the literary sources, the Megarians settled on fields given to them by the Sicule king Hyblon.

Rather than in Pantalica, as suggested by L. Bernabò Brea, we think today that king Hyblon and the Hyblaioi resided in Villas- mundo, less than 10 km to the Northwest of Megara Hyblaea. The site contains a fortified village from the end of the Neolithic Age, excavated by P. Orsi, then by G. Vallet and Fr.

Villard, and more widespread traces of occupa- tion from the Eneolithic period and the Bronze Age. But the Megarian plateau did not seem to be occupied at the time of the Greeks’ arrival. ¹

Delineated in the North by the valley of the Cantera river and in the South by the tor- rent of the « small San Cusmano », the site is a vast limestone plateau of triangular shape. It is divided on the sea side by a central depression, the Arenella, in two parts, called convention- ally “Northern plateau” and “Southern plateau”, but both plateaus are united in the Western part (fig. 1).

After the work of F.S. Cavallari and P. Orsi at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries (fortification, necropolis, sanctuary), the archaeological exploration of the city and of its necropolis only resumed in 1949 with the intervention of the École

Archaeological data on the foundation of Megara Hyblaea.

Certainties and hypotheses

Henri Tréziny

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168 henri tréziny

2 Vallet, Voza, 1990-1992, unpublished.

3 Gras, Tréziny and Broise, 1978-1983, published in 2004 in Gras et al., Megara Hyblaea 5, where a complete history of the researches can be found.

française de Rome, in collaboration with the Soprin tendenza archeologica per la Sicilia Ori- entale. Megara Hyblaea is, with Naxos and Heloros, one of the rare Sicilian cities from the end of 8th century which has not been covered by a modern town, and the only one which has been explored archaeologically fairly exten- sively. It still constitutes today a unique case.

In the wake of the archaeological publica- tions of Georges Vallet and François Villard, and in particular the monumental Megara Hyblaea 1 published in 1976, with architect Paul Auberson, the field researches have been limited to a series of drillings in the central depression ² and on the Southern plateau. ³ Other work in 2005-2006, still unpublished,

10

10 5 5

10

10

10

10 10

10

5

5

5

5

15 15

10

15

NORTHERN PLATEAU

ARENELLA AGORA

J

7 8 9 10

2 1 4 3 6

5

SOUTHERN PLATEAU CANTERA VALLEY

HARBOUR ?

South Necropolis North-West

Sanctuary

streets E

streets E

street A street A

street B street B

streets C streets D

C1 D1

West Necropolis

0 200m

Fig. 1: The street network of Megara Hybleae. In green, excavated areas, in red Neolithic ditch. Both circles indicate the changes in orientations of the streets A and B

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archaeological data on the foundation of megara hyblaea 169

4 Gras et al., Megara 5 p. 529, note 30 and drawing out of

text. 5 Tréziny, ‘Megara Hyblaea’, p. 258-259.

6 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 534.

concerned the Cantera lighthouse in the North- east angle of the Archaic and Hellenistic city (L.

Guzzardi), the West gate of the Archaic ram- part (H. Tréziny), the Northwest angle of the Archaic city (M. Musumeci). Geophysical prospections, begun in 2008, enable to com- plete the layout of the streets on the North pla- teau of the city. This presentation will then include few entirely new data: the aim is rather to expose as simply and as clearly as possible all the archaeological data in our possession today to reconstruct the genesis of a colonial city from the end of the 8th century BC.

1. The streets

The map of Megara Hyblaea is famous for the trapezoidal shape of the agora, enclosed between two networks of North-South streets, the streets D in the East and C in the West and major East-West streets, A in the North and B in the South. The streets C1 to 3 are parallel to one another (axial spacing of the streets 28 m, insulae 25 m) as well as the streets D1 to 10 in the East (axial spacing of the streets 25 to 28 m, insulae 22 to 25 m). The width of the streets is regular, around 3 m, except for the street C1 and the two streets A and B, between 5 and 6 m.

The streets C1 and D1, surrounding the public square, join up in the North near the fortifica- tion wall, in a position where we can be tempted to situate a “Marine gate”, connecting the city with its harbour.

The East-West streets A and B have long been considered to form the backbone of the Northern plateau’s urbanism, but their layout could only be delineated quite recently, thanks to geophysical prospections. In the North, the

street A is absolutely rectilinear towards the West from its crossroad with the street D1, at the Northeast angle of the Agora, up to the archaic fortification, at the North of tower nr 3 of the excavations of Cavallari. Street A runs along the great sanctuary of the Northwest, implanted on the levels of the Neolithic Age.

Based on current knowledge, it does not seem to have extended beyond the fortification. More to the South, the street B is also rectilinear towards the West from its crossroad with the street C1 to the “tempietto B” and runs along the South side of it (which we already knew thanks to ancient excavations). It runs along a straight line towards the West at least up to the limit of a lemon tree field, which for the moment prohibits geophysical prospection. The Western end of street B is not known precisely yet, but we can say that, contrary to the hypothesis sug- gested in Megara 1 (drawing 1), and as we envis- aged already in Megara 5, ⁴ street B does not extend towards the West archaic gate. ⁵

Both streets A and B are hence rectilinear at the West of the Agora, which may suggest that they were set up at a single time, but they are not parallel, whereas their spacing varies from 180m at the rampart to 110m at the West of the Agora at the street C1. Their orientations change at the East of the streets C1 and D1, but they always run closer up to a theoretical spac- ing of 80m by the seaside.

The groups of plots included between the streets A and B, groups which, for convenience, we shall call insulae, even if the notion of insula is only second, ⁶ have all been built with a differ- ent North-South measurement, but we have also seen that their widths were variable, in any case from one sector to the other, between 22 and 25m. It is in that context of high regularity

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170 henri tréziny

7 Tréziny, ‘Lots et îlots’; Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 535-539.

8 Gras and Tréziny, Megara Hyblaea 1, p. 266, fig. 34.

9 Villard, ‘Le cas de Mégara Hyblaea’.

10 On this score, see already Fusaro, ‘Note di archittetura’

and Vallet, ‘Topographie historique’.

(parallel streets, groups of insulae of same width) and of irregularities (non-orthogonal system, variable length of the insulae) that we must endeavour to understand as the conditions under which the building plots were set up.

2. The lot-sizing procedure

The other major feature of the Megarian urbanism was indeed the existence of building plots, particularly clear in the sector of the Agora, but it can be seen also in all the other excavated sectors, both in the West portion of the North plateau and on the South plateau. ⁷ In the sector of the Agora, the plots of the 8th cen- tury measure approximately 12.50m by 9.70m at the West of the square (group of the streets C), 12.45 by 11m at the East (streets D) in a sector which, admittedly, has hardly been excavated. On the South plateau, the plots seem to measure 11m (in the North-South direction) by 11m to 11.50m in the East-West direction.

Comparable measurements are likely at the West of the railway, in a sector still little explored (streets E).

It has also been shown, and I shall not dwell upon it, that, if the plots from the late 8th century were not materialised by walls, all the houses from the late 8th century identified on the sector of the Agora or on the South plateau were perfectly aligned with the street network and integrated in the theoretical grid of the building plot, as it can be established for the 7th century. It should be reminded indeed that, contrary to what was suggested in Megara Hyblaea 1, the houses of the 8th century are

never in the centre of a plot (fig. 2). ⁸ It is hence certain that this land-division was set up, at least in the two sectors mentioned, in the late 8th century. The insulae delineated by the streets were most improbably major primitive plots, kleroi granted to the first generation set- tlers, and which were only subdivided in a sec- ond stage, as has sometimes been suggested. ⁹ The division into plots is primary and consti- tutes the base of the urban plan. ¹⁰ The sizes of the plots vary between 110 and 140m ² , around 120m ² , and we think that the variations are not sufficient to say that these plots had different surface areas. It is undoubtedly the conse- quence of the difficulties encountered by the surveyors to set up a regular subdivision in a non-orthogonal space.

We endeavoured in Megara 5 to offer hypotheses on the mode of construction of the plots. I shall add here that there are at least two ways of developing the plot, two “processes”

I would say. The former (fig. 3a) consists of a base line (for example the street A or the street B) to carry out a measurement (for instance 11 m) along a determined axis (for instance the street D1), with next the drawing of perpen- dicular lines to the street D1. This method defines equal quadrangular plots, except at both ends of the insula, and because the streets are not orthogonal, causes on the median axis an offset which is all the greater since the angle of the streets is acute. In the cases observed, that offset varies between 0.5 and 1m approxi- mately.

In the second process (fig. 3b), the method is the same as above, but lines are drawn paral- lel to the baseline, which produces plots in the form of a parallelogram or of a trapezium,

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archaeological data on the foundation of megara hyblaea 171

house 23,14 house 23,10-11

house 23,8 «heroon»

plot 6W-12

plot 6E-12 plot 6W-11

plot 6W-10

Fig. 2: The houses and the plots at the West of the Agora in the 7

century (insula 6); in black, layout of the houses in the end of the 8th century (see Megara 1, fig. 47, modified)

ILOT 21 ILOT 18

ILOT 9 ILOT 11

ILOT 8

ILOT 17

W01

W02

W03 E03

W03 E03

W04 E04

W05 E05

E02

W02 E02

E01

W01 E01

a b

rue D4

rue D2

rue D3 rue B

rue B rue D1

0 10

HT 2013

N

Fig. 3: Lot-sizing procédés: a - at the East of the Agora, insula 18 (Procédé n°1); b - in the South of the Agora, insula 9 (Procédé n°2)

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172 henri tréziny

11 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 512-519; a third platform was discovered in the meantime in the insula 6: Gras and Tréziny, ‘Mégara Hyblaea’, fig. 2.

12 Mertens, ‘Selinunte’.

13 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 569.

14 The thesis developed by G. Nenci, ‘Spazio civico’, ‘Il Pelargico’ of the “spazio di rispetto”, i.e. districts left empty inside the rampart, for population growth or for accommodating inhabitant of the chora, does not seem to be verified here.

which are all equal, except perhaps at the end, without any offset on the median axis, which might form a broken line. This method was apparently used in the North (insula 16) and in the South (insula 9) of the Agora and perhaps in the sector of the streets E at the tempietto B (insula 131).

The existence of circular platforms in cer- tain plots of the habitat the West of the Agora ¹¹ has aroused all the more interest so since simi- lar constructions were discovered more recently in Selinunte. ¹² They were construed as places of heroic worship in the honour of the ancestors, probably of ancient date (late 8th century for the platform 13,20 of Megara Hyblaea), and perhaps linked with the setting up of the build- ing plots.

3. The chronology of the implantation

As we saw, in sector of the Agora and on the South plateau, the setting up of the street network and of the subdivision certainly dates back to the late 8th century.l

In the Western part, to the West of the railway, the small extension of the excavations does not enable a sound conclusion. A number of houses found during the excavations or through geophysical prospections suggest that the Western part of the site was already inhab- ited in the 7th century. As for the end of the 8th century, the pottery is abundant and we noted

that the majority of the Thapsos cups published in Megara 2 in 1964 originated from the exca- vations of the 1950s, before the beginning of the exploration of the Agora district. ¹³ The excavation of 2006 on the carriage gate of the Western rampart has again delivered a few ancient fragments (Aetos 666, Thapsos cup), which demonstrates a significant occupation.

But to this day, no wall with large stones (“mur à orthostates”, type 1 of Megara 1), characteris- tic of that period, has been found in this por- tion of the city. To be specific: I am not saying that the Western half of the city was not occu- pied at the end of the 8th century, but only that the current state of researches does not provide us with the archaeological evidence.

The recent development of the geophysical prospections on sites like Selinunte or Megara Hyblaea demonstrates (for Selinunte) and sug- gests (for Megara Hyblaea), that there is no sig- nificant space left void intra-muros, with the exception of the Agora or of certain sacred spaces. ¹⁴ But, in the absence of stratigraphic verifications, this is valid for the end of the period (beginning of the 5th century in Megara Hybleae, end of the 5th century in Selinunte) and obviously does not say anything of the ancient phases.

Besides, even if the space was divided from the late 8th century, it is probable that certain plots were not immediately occupied but kept as reserves, whose legal status would be inter- esting to know.

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archaeological data on the foundation of megara hyblaea 173

15 Discussion and bibliography in Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 556-557.

16 L. Guzzardi et al., ‘Rinvenimenti nel santuario’, p. 293.

17 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 524-526.

18 Villard, “La céramique géométrique”.

19 Corinthian amphoras dated in the third quarter of the 8

century (work in progress, information J.-C. Sourisseau).

20 Di Vita, ‘Urbanistica’, p. 268.

21 Polignac, ‘L’installation’.

22 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 339-341.

23 This hypothesis shall be corrected in the light of the data on the Neolithic village (excavations 1950-1952) being re-examined by a team of the Paolo Orsi Museum and of recent findings regarding the Eneolithic period and the Bronze Age. The most recent clarification is in Tréziny,

“Grecs et indigènes”.

4. Districts, villages, encampments

It has been attempted once to explain the variety of the orientations of Megarian urban- ism with reference to the Megarian komai attested by the sources. Today, this hypothesis has been abandoned, and we prefer to empha- sise the unity of the Megarian society, even if the existence of different Megarian groups, or groups of other ethnic origins can still be con- templated. ¹⁵ But it has also been suggested that the urban plan of Megara Hybleae took some time to be set up, and that it had been preceded by a “proto-colonial” implantation, also called

“encampment phase”. Several types of evidence can be related to the “encampment phase”. First of all, post holes recently found by L. Guzzardi under the Cantera lighthouse, whose dating is unfortunately quite uncertain (Neolithic?

Bronze Age? Geometric era?). ¹⁶ Subsequently, bottle-shaped silos, abandoned or transformed in the first half of the 7th century. ¹⁷ These silos, whose date is quite difficult to fix, were grouped in the Northeast angle of the Agora (for three of them) or in the settlement area in the South- west. They were quite probably prior to the installation of the urban plan (last quarter of the 8th century) and we note with interest that both groups are quite close to the inflection points of street A in the Northeast and of street B in the Southwest. Finally, ceramic material listed in the past by Fr. Villard ¹⁸ seems to date

to the middle or the third quarter of the 8th century, which could be backed up by the recent re-examination of certain material of the Southern necropolis. ¹⁹ Perhaps, one has to imagine during this “encampment phase” sev- eral groups of huts (“villages”), which probably ought to be situated rather in the sector of the Archaic Agora, and which might have served as starting points for plotting axes of the urban plan. We agree here with a hypothesis already formulated in particular by A. Di Vita ²⁰ but limiting it to the ancient phase, prior to the setting up of the urban plan.

5. Agora and sanctuaries

Fr. de Polignac has suggested that the major public areas of the city, the agora and the sanctuary of the North-West, were only organ- ised around the middle of the 7th century. For- merly, the city would have been surrounded with a corona of sanctuaries. ²¹ We suggested in Megara 5 that the sanctuary of the North-West was probably older than the 7th century and probably implanted at the centre of the Neo- lithic village whose contour (ditch and agger?) was still visible at the Greeks’ arrival. ²² The geo- graphical location of the first place of worship (“temple B”) and the delineation of the temenos would then be attributable to the first settlers, perhaps during the setting up of the urban plan, maybe even during the “encampment phase”. ²³

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174 henri tréziny

24 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 440.

25 We have incidentally suggested in Megara 5 that the public area of the Agora had extended first of all to the North of the street A, in the Southern portion of the insulae 13 and 16, which probably contained places of worship.

That sector became physically separated from the public square only when the Northern stoa was built.

26 Vallet, ‘Topographie historique’, p. 643.

27 Villard, ‘Le cas de Mégara Hyblaea’.

28 About this distinction and the meaning to give to gepedon (rural plot and not “small town garden”), see Megara 5, p. 533-534. Contra, Nenci ‘Oikopedon’.

29 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 577, 586-588.

As for the agora, which occupied the Northern half of the trapezoidal space between the streets A, B, C1 and D1, it was limited in the South by a line perpendicular to street D1. ²⁴ This line cannot be the result of the construc- tion from street B of the insulae 15, 12, 10, but, on the contrary, is the starting point of that construction from the North to the South (fig. 4). The shape of the agora hence resulted from a contemporary construction of the urban plan. Obviously, this does not rule out that its monumental arrangement and the definition of its functions are the result of a gradual con- struction during the 7th century. ²⁵

6. The Megarian urbanism

We have used on several occasions the expression “urban plan” to designate the land division. Indeed, we cannot consider any longer the Megara Hybleae plan as a simple

“allocation of plots” in opposition to a “true urban design” ²⁶ , nor imagine that the insulae delineated by the streets are ancient kleroi subdivided in a second stage. ²⁷ The aim of the primary division of the ground into 120 to 130m2 plots was to build houses. They were oikopeda, and not gepeda. ²⁸ This was indeed an urban plan inasmuch as it allowed to define plots for building urban houses and not fields to cultivate corn or vineyards.

This urban plan is also striking because of its stability. The building plot established

street A

street B str eet C1

street A

str eet D1

Fig. 4: The Agora around 700 BC. The asterisks indicate places of worship, the black circles three silos in the Agora

toward the end of the 8th century did not undergo any significant modification during the lifetime of the city, and its “rigidity” has been mentioned as one of the causes of the col- onisation of Selinunte. ²⁹ Stability also because, if there are no major empty spaces inside the city, there were no suburbs outside the city. The separation between two divided spaces, city and countryside, was marked by a fortification at an early stage.

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archaeological data on the foundation of megara hyblaea 175

30 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 157-231.

31 Orsi, ‘Megara Hyblaea’; the excavation of 2006 has not been published yet, but see the «excavations chronicle»

Tréziny, ‘Mégara Hyblaea’.

32 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 229.

7. Th e city wall

Th e excavations on the Southern wall have enabled to defi ne three main phases of the ram- part (fi g. 5). ³⁰ It was fi rst of all a simple ditch together with an agger with an external facing, datable to the middle of the 7th century, at the latest, but which might be older. Th en, toward the end of the 7th century, the agger was com- pleted on the city side with an internal facing.

Th us, it became a wall with a double facing, of approx. 6 to 7m in width, sometimes more.

During the 6th century, the rampart was rebuilt in heavy masonry. Th e excavation of 2006 on the West gate, already explored by P. Orsi ³¹ , has fully confi rmed these fi rst hypotheses without enabling to specify the chronology. Th e fi rst enclosure is certainly older than the second one (last quarter of the 7th century) and contempo- rary with the digging of the ditch, which was fi lled around the middle of the 7th century. In

the absence of archaeological material inside the agger and of archaeological structures or levels abutting the rampart, it is not possible to specify the date of the fi rst rampart further, which may hence be contemporary with the fi rst town planning or slightly posterior. We could observe in the Southern city-wall that the oldest sewers matched the streets, which might advocate contemporaneity of the enclosure and the setting up of the urban plan. ³² Conversely, as said previously, the hypothesis of a corre- spondence between street B and the West gate has now been abandoned.

8. Town and necropolis

Th e oldest tombs of Megara Hybleae were found in the Southern necropolis (fi g. 6). Th e largest groups are thus quite remote from the city and the fortifi cation. Based on the current

1 2

3

0 1 2 3m W

E

2

3

Fig. 5: Sectional view of the West fortifi cation at the driveway gate: in orange (1), fi rst agger; in green (2), wall with a double facing of the last quarter of the 7th century; in light grey (3), wall with heavy masonry of the 6th century

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176 henri tréziny

33 Gras et al., Megara 5, p. 558.

state of knowledge, no tomb originates with certainty from the intra-muros space, with the exception of four unpublished sets of the begin- ning of the 7th century, from the central depres- sion of the Arenella, whose topographical sig-

nifi cance still remains to be verifi ed. ³³ Th ese would be isolated tombs anyway.

Th e material of the oldest tombs in the Southern necropolis exists mainly of globular aryballoi from early Proto-Corinthian period,

South necropolis North necropolis

West necropolis

Cantera

S. Cusmano Marcellino

0 1km

Fig. 6: Th e archaic necropolis of Megara Hyblaea

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archaeological data on the foundation of megara hyblaea 177

34 About these tombs, Cébéillac, ‘Une étude’; for lowering the chronology of the Aryballes, Neeft, Protocorinthian.

35 See the inventory suggested by P. Pelagatti, ‘I più antichi materiali’, p. 164-171.

36 The Southern necropolis is being published under the direction of M. Gras and H. Duday.

37 The apparent differences between the houses of Megara, of Ortygia (Pelagatti, ‘I più antichi materiali’) and of Naxos (Lentini, “Sicilian Naxos”) rather concern details and ought to be specified by intensified excavations and publications.

38 Tréziny, ‘De Mégara Hyblaea’.

which we suggest dating rather from the last quarter of the 8th century and the first quarter of the 7th century. ³⁴ No tomb from Megara Hybleae contains Thapsos cups, but this has no chronological meaning: the Thapsos cups were found in the settlement or in indigenous tombs, practically never in Greek tombs. ³⁵ Certain tombs without material and some tombs at enchystrismos could be, as seen above, contem- porary to the oldest pottery found in the city, and maybe hence contemporary to the “encamp- ment phase”. This would imply that the tombs of the first Megarians of the “encampment phase”

are already installed in the sector which will become the cemetery (or one of the cemeteries) of the city at the time of the first building plots. ³⁶

9. The foundation of Megara Hybleae and the Megarian

«model»

In the late 8th century, the site of Megara was occupied by an urban-type land-division, inasmuch as it consisted of dividing the land into small-sized plots, for accommodating houses. That land-division may quite likely have covered all of the sixty hectares of the archaic city, even if the state of the archaeologi- cal exploration does not enable to assert that it was the case everywhere. That “urban” space, inside which public areas (agora, sanctuaries) are delineated, is separate from the “rural”

space or chora and from the necropolis by a boundary, i.e. the present or future fortifica- tion, whose date (between the end of the 8th and the middle of the 7th century) cannot be fixed with accuracy.

Despite the deficiencies of our docu- mentation, the organisation of the space which can be seen fairly clearly today in the layout of Megara Hybleae, seems to be quite close of that seen in Ortygia or in Naxos at the end of the 8th century: ³⁷ the same building plot system, prob- ably equalitarian along parallel streets, but forming several different and non orthogonal systems (or “districts”). ³⁸ It is the solution that seems to have been adopted in most of the known sites (with the exception probably of Leontinoi, due to a rugged topography) around the same time (end of the 8th century) and independently from the assumed origin of the first settlers.

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