ENHANCEMENT OF ANCIENT HISTORICAL HERITAGE

At the end of the course the student should be able to

- identify the territory as a privileged environment of historical research, i.e. as an ideal place within which to read and reconstruct the representative value that the ancient Greeks and Romans attributed to space through infrastructures, ways and forms of living, contacts, conflicts and cultural interactions;

- to appropriately contextualise with the help of ancient sources (literary, epigraphic, numismatic, papyrological and archaeological evidence) both objects of material culture (daily life and productive activities) and monuments and works of historical and artistic interest from Greek and Roman antiquity;

- increase one’s knowledge and stimulate one’s interest in the peculiarities of the landscape - urban and rural – as the outcome of a centuries – old process of dense and complex historical stratification from the Greek age to Late Antiquity;

- to acquire in both diachronic and synchronic perspective a correct approach to the territory understood not only as a ‘container’ of natural and artificial objects, but also as a ‘stage’ of their interaction and a ‘method’ to write its history, through the analysis of continuity factors and transformation dynamics;

- combine theoretical learning and applied experimentation, an inseparable and indispensable training nexus for the learner's interpretative construction, aimed at recognising and protecting the cultural memory and historical heritage of an area;

- become part of a virtuous cultural process aimed at arousing in the learner himself the respect and desire for the recovery and interpretive upgrading of all those misunderstood, compromised or degraded elements of the ancient historical heritage.

Attendance is not compulsory, but definitely advisable, both because the contents of the lectures will be punctually supported by the projection of slides and supplemented by the lecturer’s explanation, and because comprehension of the aforementioned contents will be periodically checked in the classroom through appropriate formative feedback (reading, analysis and commentary on a document and/or a monument; drafting of conceptual maps).

Crucial events in Sicily between the 8th and 1st centuries BC

Crucial events in Sicily between the 1st and 9th centuries A.D.

Landscapes in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Sicily.

City and territory in republican and imperial Sicily.

Architecture, materials, techniques and forms of building in Roman and Byzantine Sicily.

Impact of the Roman system on the island’s civilisations.

Agrarian vocation and island production systems.

Spread of Christianity and the first bishoprics in Sicily.

Evidence of the Byzantine presence in the north-eastern cusp of the island.

Enhancement of Sicilian heritage: scholars, scientists and travellers in Sicily.

Contribution of education to the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development:

4.4. “By 2030, substantially increase the number of young people and adults with the necessary skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurial skills”.

Ø    C. Quartarone (a cura di), Sicilia romana e bizantina, Palermo Grafill 2006, pp. 1-391.

Ø    G. Barone (a cura di), Storia mondiale della Sicilia, Roma-Bari Editori Laterza 2018, pp. 20-117. 

The student may take an in itinere test consisting in the production of a written paper on the contents of the text by C. Quartarone (ed.), Sicilia romana e bizantina, Palermo Grafill 2006, pp. 1-391. Further operative indications will be made known through a specific notice published in Studium.

Students must pass this test with a mark of at least 18/30 in order to then be able to take, at the official appeal, the oral test only on the remaining part of the programme, i.e. the text by G. Barone (ed.), Storia mondiale della Sicilia, Roma-Bari Editori Laterza 2018, pp. 20-117.

Students who have not chosen to take this in itinere test or who, despite having taken it, have not obtained at least a sufficient mark may of course take the oral examination on the whole programme at the official round.

The assessment of the in itinere test averages in the formulation of the final grade.

Final examination: oral.

The following assessment criteria will be adopted for the awarding of marks for both the in itinere test and the final oral examination:

- ability to independently rework and critically examine in depth the content acquired;

- ability to make appropriate use of expressive means;

- ability to use the technical vocabulary of the discipline appropriately;

- ability to grasp space-time and cause-effect connections;

- ability to establish interdisciplinary connections through the methodology of historical research.

The questions will focus on the content presented in class by the teacher and analytically indicated above among the topics of the syllabus. These topics not only represent the core and merely illustrative of the various questions posed during the examination, but also constitute the necessary cue for verifying in each individual student the capacity for in-depth study and autonomous rethinking, expressive and lexical skills, and the ability to make interdisciplinary connections.