NEW ARCHAEOASTRONOMICAL FINDINGS IN THE ALTO BELICE VALLEY (SICILY)

Abstract

We have recently discovered that, not far (8 km) from the Monte Arcivocalotto megalith (the Campanaru, presented at the previous SAEC Conference), on the top of a hill significantly named “Cozzo Perciata” (i.e., in local dialect “Hill of the pierced one”), there is another pierced rock. It collapsed a few decades ago, but a photograph, taken in the late 1960s or in the first half of the 1970s, shows as it was quite similar to the Campanaru of Monte Arcivocalotto. Furthermore, the lower part of this rock is still in place: it was thus possible to measure the direction of the hole axis. It was found that it points to the top of the Bronze Age sacred rock of Pizzo Pietralunga, with azimuth of 60.6° and altitude over the horizontal plane of 1.7°: this direction exactly corresponds to the one of the sunrise over the local geographical horizon on the summer solstice of the beginning of the second millennium BC. Direct observations performed during the summer solstice of 2013 have actually shown that the phenomenon is still observable. Also in the case of this pierced rock, there are various ethnographic evidences of the symbolical value of the claimed alignment. Concerning the archaeological evidences, in the area of a few meters around the pierced rock of Cozzo Perciata, fragments of Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age ceramics are visible. Thus, also waiting for further archaeological studies that can finally confirm the contemporary frequentation of the Monte Arcivocalotto, Pizzo Pietralunga and Cozzo Perciata sites, the probability that in this area could be found by chance two similar artificially pierced rocks (the ones of Monte Arcivocalotto and Cozzo Perciata), with different and complementary solstitial alignments (to winter and summer solstices) looks to be totally negligible.