Incisioni lineari e pitture preistoriche ai Ripari di San Giovanni, Sambuca di Sicilia (Agrigento, Italia)

The rock paintings of the San Giovanni shelters in Sambuca di Sicilia (Agrigento, Italy). The prehistoric site of San Giovanni district is located a few kilometres south of the village of Sambuca di Sicilia (Agrigento), on the south-western slopes of the Cozzo Don Paolo, where there are some rock shelters and a large natural cave. The shelters are characterized by numerous schematic incisions made up of vertical lines and geometric graphemes; in particular, the back wall of shelter A is affected by more than 400 linear incisions and the adjacent shelter B by a rock painting. The rock complex of Sambuca di Sicilia is part of a Mediterranean phenomenon of schematic “art” which are dated to the Upper Paleolithic in literature and of which the San Giovanni Shelters would constitute the richest site in the entire Mediterranean basin. The relationship between these engravings and the painting of Shelter B which has been hypothetically referred to the Neolithic age is not clear. The painted figures are at the centre of our communication and of the multidisciplinary research project at the San Giovanni Shelters that began in 2021. In Shelters A and B a photographic and photogrammetric survey was carried out (from the ground for the rock walls and from a drone for the surrounding area), a contact graphic survey (both of the paintings and the engravings), a preliminary analysis of the signs they intend to be the basis for a geostatistical study of the morphometric characteristics of each sign in relation to the relative position and the landscape, and a survey of skyscape archaeology to analyse the western horizon visible from the shelters. A surface archaeological reconnaissance campaign intends to define the chronology and characteristics of human attendance in the area through the study of material culture. Observation inch by inch of the rock of Shelter A allowed the identification of new figures traced with red pigment in the upper part of the shelter. The high-definition photographic images were processed with raster image enhancement software, in order to identify details and shapes of the figures. In Shelter B this has made it possible to better define even the more complex rock paintings, which appear in a geometric pattern and traced in black pigment on a red background. In both shelters a chemical-physical characterization program was launched to determine the nature of the pigments and also to evaluate the possibility of dating them. The iconographic research is aimed at identifying any relationships with the Mediterranean and continental world in the different eras and connections with sites on the island that present similar rock paintings and engravings. A first and interesting result is the close parallelism that runs between the "chain" figure of Shelter B of San Giovanni and similar figures present in Porto Badisco (Otranto, Puglia) which would also justify the proposed chrono-cultural attribution.