Event: Wednesday Talk: A New Model for the City of Selinous (Sicily): Stories from a Current Field-Project

Abstract: The city of Selinous, on the southern coast of Sicily, was founded by Greek settlers at the end of the 7th century BCE. After being destroyed by the Carthaginians at the end of the fifth century BCE it was used as a fortress and subsequently rebuilt as a civil settlement with distinct material characteristics known from the Punic sphere of influence. During the first Punic war it was abandoned and never extensively reoccupied. For this reason, the city of the Greek period is still largely preserved and well protected in one of the biggest archaeological parks of Europe. Its monumental sacred and public spaces are widely known, yet, many questions remain concerning not only the various transformations of the area after the catastrophic event of 409 BCE, but also the specific development and use of the urban space from the 7th century onwards. 

Bio: Dr. Melanie Jonasch is a Classical archaeologist and research associate at the German Archaeological Institute in Rome and Berlin. Since 2021 she has coordinated a multidisciplinary field- project in Selinous (Sicily) and is responsible for the archaeological excavations conducted in this framework. She will be a fellow of the AIA at the Cotsen-Institute of Archaeology until April where she will begin work on a new project about population aggregation and the development of secondary settlements in the neighborhood of the emerging Greek colonies.