Scorrione West (Modica, Sicily)

With 149 documented graves -ranging from funerary chambers to open-air burials- this site offers one of the most comprehensive datasets currently available for the study of Late Antique rock-cut landscapes in the western Mediterranean. The site's long sequence of use, reuse, abandonment, and collapse -from the 5th to the 9th century- makes Scorrione West a key case study for understanding broader patterns of continuity and transformation in the Sicilian countryside. It provides rare insights into its spatial organization and the social composition of its users. Through an integrated approach combining archaeological, bioarchaeological, and material culture analysis, the volume reconstructs the lived realities and afterlives of a rural community over the course of several centuries.