Rivettazzo quarry in Solarino
Azotoliquido - CC3.0
Cava del Rivettazzo in Solarino is a prehistoric necropolis and is the only site in Sicily that bears witness to all phases of Sicilian civilization.
The archaeological site, discovered at the beginning of the 20th century by the archaeologist Paolo Orsi, is made up of about a hundred sepulchers dating back to the Bronze Age.
From the finds found on site, from the diversity of the shape of the niches, belonging to different periods and from the presence of more recent materials in the sepulcher ancient, it has been possible to state that the site was frequented by a small group of people already many centuries before the 2nd millennium BC, therefore starting from the Ancient Bronze Age, and that, during the Middle and Recent Bronze Age the population it organized itself into villages of huts, which to date have not yet been identified.
The human presence in these places since ancient times is justified by the proximity to the Anapo river which flowed inside the quarry and which served as an abundant reserve of water and a communication route with the other human settlements along the eastern Sicilian coast, today's Ortigia, and in the highest part of the riverbed of the same river, where Pantalica rises.
Not far from the Rivettazzo quarry there is the largest necropolis of Calancon del vento, also known as Cava del Parroco, coeval with Rivettazzo and devastated by the Byzantines, whose reference village should have been in Cugno Cardone. The site has not been excavated to date.
