Spatial distribution of the sanctuaries of Athena in greek sites of Sicily archaic

Abstract

To understand the ancient Greek religion is required to understand the ancient Greek city, the polis, while respecting their complexity and variability in time and space. A society that lived in ho polis space was, in essence, a civic and community service. Analysis of the location of the holy places in a polis, the relationship of these with specialized spaces of the ancient Greek city, is a way for the interpretation of religious practice and the polis that the houses. The polis understood materially from the urban part, called Asty area, rural area of cultivation, Khora, and border regions, mines and forests, called eskhatiá. These spaces were perfectly integrated and inhabited by populations that shared language, religious practices and common ways to build your material world. Religion in ancient Greece was not systematic and dogmatic, but their integration in people's lives was so great that it would not be possible to analyze the polis, the dynamics of public and private spaces, the idea of territory and borders without the religious dimension. Hence, many questions arise: how was organized the spatial distribution of the polis sanctuaries and, especially, what is the meaning of this distribution? Or in other words, the sanctuaries of different deities were distributed randomly through the territory or you can find a pattern? To address these issues we chose the study of the spatial distribution of the dedicated areas for the goddess Athena in a particular set of polis, the Greek foundations in Sicily in time archaic and classical (VIII centuries BC).