Agrigento, a rich votive deposit with 60 statues discovered at the Valley of the Temples

At Agrigento, in the Valley of the Temples, a rich votive deposit consisting of at least sixty terracotta figurines, female protomes and busts, oil lamps and small vases, and bronze fragments, mixed with a large number of bones, was found. The objects were found in House VII b, which forms part of the housing complex north of the temple of Juno. The campaign is fully funded and supported by the Sicilian Region through the Valley of the Temples Archaeological Park, directed by Roberto Sciarratta, and is led by archaeologist Maria Concetta Parello.

The findings provide insight into the dynamics of the destruction of Akragas in 406 B.C. by the Carthaginians, when the inhabitants had to flee in exodus to Gela, leaving behind, as Diodorus Siculus writes, “everything that had constituted their happiness,” thus possessions, the ordinary, and the gods before whom they prayed.

The votive deposit, which would appear to have been arranged above the destruction levels of the house, may tell the story of the time when its objects were recovered by the Akragantines after the destruction. To define with certainty the function of the interesting deposit will require further research, paying close attention to the stratigraphic connections between the deposit and the living and abandonment levels of the house. Meanwhile, restoration of the large number of recovered artifacts has already been planned in anticipation of their immediate valorization.

“We are working tirelessly to return to Sicily moments of history that belong to it,” says the councilor for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, Francesco Paolo Scarpinato. “The findings from the Valley, which is currently experiencing an extraordinary season with the more than 23,400 visitors in the last weekend alone, come during an excavation campaign that began in 2019 and was then blocked by Covid, and this makes the discovery even more significant. It seems like every site right now has something to tell us.”

“This is a scientific intervention that we have supported in recent years,” says Valley of the Temples Park director Roberto Sciarratta, “and it has immediately yielded important results. In the excavation area, which gives us a detailed reading of historical events, a large sector of habitation had already been identified, namely houses from the Greek period, whose main phase ends with the conquest and destruction of the city by the Carthaginians.”

Agrigento, a rich votive deposit with 60 statues discovered at the Valley of the Temples

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