L’Etna e i santuari di Adrano e di Efesto: procedure riparative e porosità culturale

Abstract

Some sacred areas in eastern Sicily are the site of cults and ritual procedures that ancient documentation unanimously labels as 'indigenous' or 'local'. These sanctuaries offer a suitable case study to reflect, through the lens of ritual procedures, on the modalities of inter-ethnic contact and on the difficulties and methodological limitations of interpretative categories linked to the notion of ethnos and ethnicity. In this framework, the notion of 'porosity', by which I intend to refer to an irregular and asymmetrical set of cultural negotiations and transactions, which are the effect of multiple contact situations, which in my view can be distinguished into phenomena of 'cohesion' and phenomena of 'adherence', may be valid.