All Over the Geologic Spectrum

So in this one Thursday, we visited quarries, salt flats, sailed to a small island, and traveled to the top of a mountain. We also saw our very last Doric temple of the trip *tear*

Our first stop was at the Cave di Cusa quarries, which was basically a pile of rocks out in the middle of nowhere—so, lots of fun! We had a great student report on the quarrying operation (did you know that the tools for quarrying didn’t really change much from the 6^th century BCE to the 19^th century CE?), and got to see some of the huge drums that were carved to send to Selinunte to build the temples. The stone in the area is a particularly fine-grained limestone called “calcarenite” which allows very large chunks of stone to be cut out in one piece—the average Cusa drum was 2-3.75 meters in diameter. Okay, geology nerd time over, on to the pictures!

Here’s one of the giant drums. The quarry was abandoned around 470 BCE, and they apparently just up and left—lots of the drums are just sitting out like this.

Oh no, Dora is about to get crushed by the drum! Yeah, there are lots of silly pictures like these—there are sadly none of me, because I was too busy taking pictures of everyone else. Besides, Dora had the best idea with this one.

Here you can see how the drums were carved out from the surrounding rock—the channel is carved down around it, and then the drum would be pulled down and away. Also, it's bigger than it looks in this picture--at least 15 feet high, at a very rough estimation.

Franco dragged us a short distance away from the main quarry area to see a section where several partially carved capitals were left lying around. He got all the professors together to pose on top of this one, and we all stood on the sides clapping and taking our own pictures.

Fabio bus doesn’t need any puny paved roads—it drives EVERYWHERE! (no, seriously, we were on this little dirt and gravel road out in the middle of nowhere)

After Cave di Cusa, we drove off to have a fairly brief visit to the Marsala Archaeological Museum. The main point of interest at the museum was the remains of a Punic scouting ship from around 235 BCE. It had probably sunk in a battle at the end of the First Punic War, and was later brought to the surface, desalinated, and essentially embalmed to keep it more or less intact. There are no pictures because the museum didn’t allow cameras, which tends to lead to me sulking and not buying anything from their giftshop. Aside from the ship, there really wasn’t much of interest in the museum, not that I would have remembered it anyway, since I have no pictures (can you tell I’m bitter?) Anyway, we then headed to the docks, where we prepared to pack onto a tiny boat so that we could be sailed out to the little island of Motya.

While we were hanging out at the docks, we saw these huge white piles—they’re piles of pure salt, from the salt flats in the area. I was sorry we never had the chance to get any closer, as I thought that these were really cool.

Here we all are getting off the boat—I told you it was tiny! I’m still not sure how we fit 43 people onto it (although I think the fact that about eleven of us, myself included, crammed ourselves onto the front end to be in the open air had something to do with it).

Here's the island itself, as we approach. It's a very small island

Our first visit on Motya was to a museum, and along the path to the museum were these giant hedge-like bushes...of aloe vera. Did you know that aloe vera can grow so huge? Well, now you do--if you let it grow up and out rather than stay compact, it won't have the juicy leaves filled with gel, but it will grow into quite a large bush. As Dad would say, "I know a little bit about a lot of things".

This was the main exhibit of the museum--the Motya Ephebe (it just means "youth"). The island of Motya is owned by a single family, who permit excavations on the island provided that everything found there stays at the small museum there. Therefore, much like the discussion on the acroliths from Morgantina, this is a famous (in the classics world) statue, that happens to be in a museum out in the middle of nowhere. The reason this statue is so famous is because it created quite a conundrum for ancient historians--the stylistic elements such as the flowing, clinging drapery point to a post-415 BCE date, but the facial expression and hair point to to a very early classical style (and the head and body are monolithic marble, so there's no easy solution to be found there). Eventually it was reconciled to being created somewhere around 480 BCE, but it would have been a very experimental sculpture for its time.

I think I mentioned at one point that a lot of the glass beads you'll see from ancient times look a lot like the gaudy glass bead bracelets you can pick up at a flea market. Well, here's my evidence for that theory :P

This is a profoundly creepy clay mask. It's made even more creepy and disturbing when you know the story behind it.

This place was on the far side of the island (yes, we walked from one end of the island to the other--it's only about 2 km in diameter), and a student had his site presentation here, and I am very glad it was not my presentation. This is what's known as a tophet, and it's part of a Punic (also known as Phoenecian, also known as Carthaginian, the differences are all pretty minute and not important unless you're a classics student) religious ritual. Depressingly, said ritual is that of child sacrifice by ritual immolation, particularly in times of war--the ritual required the cheerful sacrifice of that which is most dear, so the parents of the victim would wear a clay mask with a smiling face on it (I told you it got creepier). And I think that's probably all I really need to share on the subject--I was glad to leave.

Rather than cutting straight back across the island, for some reason we followed around the outside edge of it. It may have been to take a look at the former causeway--the residents of Motya in ancient times had built a road across the shallow 1 km to the mainland, but it's back under the waves now and while others said they could see it, I never quite managed it. Apparently there had been some rain or seawater on the path, and it was blocked off (by the remarkably useless act of placing the chain you can see here). Well, we'd already gone about halfway around the island, and were already late for lunch, so we hopped the chain and managed to find enough dry ground to get us over the pools. Because that's just what we do--when the professors explained that we would have class no matter what the conditions were, I'm pretty sure they also meant we'd keep going whether or not the path was gone :P

This really was a gorgeous little island. I just wanted to share one of the pictures from our trek around the outside of the island.

After we made our way back to the mainland, we had a nice stop for lunch, at a place that served lots of wonderful food (as usual), including a bizarre red pesto pasta that was nonetheless very tasty. We were were then herded back on the bus to our last visit of the day, a town called Segesta up in the mountains. Segesta was a small, semi-successful polis that nevertheless caused a lot of trouble--the city's main goal seems to have been to destroy Selinunte, and their appeal for aid to Athens and later Carthage essentially started the Peleponnesian war and the destruction of Selinunte, Agrigento, and Gela.

In any case, our first visit at Segesta was to the theater, which was at the very top of a mountain, on a small path that not even Fabio bus could manage. So, we split into two groups and took the little tour bus up to the top, where we got to wander around for a bit until the second group made it up. 

Here's the theater from one of the upper corners--this was the only one where the sun cooperated enough to get most of the theater in it. The cavea is about 63 meters wide (and since Mom asked, my use of meters or feet depends entirely on how our professors gave us the measurement for our notes).

Here I'm standing at the top of the center of the cavea. The theater is literally carved into the top of the mountain--isn't the view spectacular?

As you can see, I thought it was so spectacular that there needed to be a panoramic picture of it :D Please do click for the full picture!

Hi! I particularly loved this theater visit because my fear of heights wasn't a problem at all--we were so high up that it all just felt unreal, like there was just a gorgeous model of the landscape spread out below us.

After we'd all indulged our desire to take pictures, we gathered in the steps of the theater and people started getting up to do various (spontaneous) performances--we got a very dramatic recitation of the Jabberwocky poem and the Riders of Rohan speech from Lord of the Rings, among others. Once the rest of the group joined us, we had a few more performances, and then our lecture on the theater. After the lecture though, Professor Serfass declared that he had a Serfass Surprise for us--three of the Centro guys who are apparently competitive a capella singers back home sang a song (in Latin, of course) to really show off the incredible acoustics of the theater. Their performance was simply fantastic, and I'm very happy that I have a video of it, despite the less-than-ideal audio (it was windy and my camera isn't that good). We weren't the only ones to enjoy the mesmerizing performance--after the trio finished, we were all startled by the thunderous applause of the crowd of fifty-odd tourists who had also gathered to listen.

For some reason, I don't have a picture just of the three before or after they sang, but here's one of them as he gives his recitation of the prologue for The Canturbury Tales (in Middle English, no less!)

Finally, we headed back down the hill, walking this time--which was particularly entertaining because my silly friends warbled whatever songs they knew...including some really silly ones like theme songs for kids' shows. The professors walked very quickly ahead of us...everyone knew they were with us anyway :P Our last stop of the day was at the single Doric temple in Segesta, and we had a wonderful view of it on our walk down:

I love seeing a perfectly-situated temple on top of a hill. And yes, I did deliberately wait until the sun was shining through the clouds right onto the top of the temple for that shot.

Sadly, that lovely sunshine didn't cooperate for many more of my pictures, particularly since it was getting late...so these are a little darker. It's still a wonderful temple, though it was of course bittersweet as it was our last temple of the trip. It was built somewhere around 430-417 BCE, and it wasn't actually ever finished--there's an amusing story that the Segestans quickly "Greek-ified" the town when they asked Athens for help, but the archaeological record just says that it was abandoned early as a temple site.

My last Doric temple. *sniff* We didn't stay long at the temple, as the sun was setting and we had to get to Palermo. Tomorrow is our last day of the Sicily trip!