The Sanctuary of the Divine Palikoi (Rocchicella di Mineo, Sicily): Fieldwork from 1995 to 2001

This report details the results of past research and current excavations at the Sanctuary of the Divine Palikoi in eastern Sicily, where fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 2001 has yielded remains of two stoas and a hestiaterion of the fifth century B.C., structures of the Archaic period, and evidence of occupation in the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods and the Sicilian Bronze Age. Literary sources tell us that in the mid fifth century B.C. the Sikel leader Ducetius founded a city, which he called Palikè, near the sanctuary and that he also created a short-lived federation of Sikel cities that challenged the hegemony of Syracuse and other coastal Greek cities. The sanctuary may have functioned as an alternative center of social and political power from the fifth century B.C. to the second century B.C. when it became a rallying point for runaway slaves.