Talk:Sicels

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I think anything about Sicel inscriptions, where they are found, on stones or on artifacts, and published comment, would enrich the context here. I didn't know there were Sicel inscriptions. --Wetman 02:30, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I found at least one credible reference to Sicel inscriptions here, which also shows an example (from Centuripe):[[1]. I dare say that it looks Indo-European, but that's just a guess. It's no wonder the Sicel language is generally regarded as an Indo-European language. Alexander 007 04:24, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There's a map at the Italian Wikipedia article that I'd have transposed here, if I were competent. The date of 1400 BC for the arrival of the Sicels is much too early, if their culture was an iron-using one. What does the best archaeology report on this? --Wetman 18:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


the sicels were NOT an italic people —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.138.70.71 (talk) 11:35, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sicani and Sicels[edit]

reverted edit User:Z as the matter is extremely disputed and not admitted outside albanian nationalist groups. Different academical sources admint a possible proto-illyrian origin for the Enotrians but not for Sicani and Sicels. see google (Enotri+Illyrians) and works by italian leading academician Giacomo Devoto Cunibertus (talk) 10:43, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi guys, accidently I've noticed your little discussion, so my few cents on this topic. There were demographic movements across the Adriatic, from the north to south and from the east to west, as domino effect caused by great Pannonian migrations toward Adriatic and south of the Balkan Peninsula (which included Doric migration too), around 1200 and 1100 BC. Some of contributors to these movements were the Messapians (to Messapia), Iapodes/Iapyges (to Iapygia), Liburnians to the Picenian coast and Sicules who were crossing the sea together with the Liburnians. Pliny the Elder (N.H. III, 14, 112) said: Iungetur hic sexta regio Umbriam complexa, agrumque Gallicum circa Ariminum. Ab Ancona Gallica ora incipit, Togatae Galliae cognomine. Siculi et Liburni plurima eius tractus tenuere, in primis Palmensum, Praetutianum, Adrianumque agrum, Emri eos expulere, hos Etruria, hanc Galli. – he gave historical order how did ethnic groups appear in Picenum and around. Admixture of different peoples there (newcomers + indigenes) produced a separate Picenum Culture. And Pliny informed about the Etruscan expansion which caused the Gallic invasion and Umbrian invasion into Picenum and departure of the Liburnians from their trade colonies in the Picenian Adriatic coast, but also (virtual or real) Siculian departure from there. Observe what this source says (The English Historical Review, Vol. 16,No. 63 (Jul., 1901), pp. 532-534) about supposition of the Ligurian origin of the Siculi - there is no any reason even to suppose something like that. In fact, before 1.200 BC Sicules were settled in modern Kaštela Bay. Cronologically: during Bronze Age - Kaštela Bay in modern day Croatia (they were P-I-E Proto-Illyrians, Illyrians were not P-I-E, they were I-E and they didn't exist at that moment yet); 1st half of the Iron Age - Picenum in Italy (one of groups within range of the Picenian Culture - probably assimilated by Italic people so speakers of some I-E Italic language in this period); 2nd half of the Iron Age - Sicily. I'm glad if this helps you. ;) Zenanarh (talk) 13:24, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation required[edit]

Pronunciation of the word Sicel is required. It's not clear if it is pronounced as SYSAL / SYKAL / SICKLE or something else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.0.15.171 (talk) 05:26, 17 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Magna Graecia?[edit]

From the intro in Sicels the saying goes that "they rapidly fused into the culture of Magna Graecia". But from the Magna Graecia article:

The term Magna Graecia first appears in Polybius' Histories.

, and then Polybius lived in the 2nd century BC.

From Sicels#History, first paragraph, a reference to Homer, via from our modern day Robert Lane Fox, establish an association between the homeric(?) glosses 'sicel' and 'sicani'. This associative gloss is extra glossy, for melting together these glosses, and for melting these glosses (/this gloss) together with the article topic. With the Homer-reference, Sicels are now precariously authenticated - meaning, implicit - at the 8th century BC. But the complexity of the homeric narrative process lurks in the background.

A fresh input (Sicels#History, second paragraph) from our modern day John Fine now takes over, to presuppose the Sicel habitation as a confluence of peoples of Illyrian stock and aboriginal mediterraneans. Now, the time frame is unfortunately lost, for when this happened, at the 12th century BC, the 8th century BC or the 3rd century BC, is not exactly clear.

By the following sentence, Thucydides is involved, also. According to the gist of the message, Thucydides' information somewhat relates to the scenario written by John Fine, and then the time frame must be somewhere between the 12th century BC (for example) and the 5th century BC, where Thucydides lived.

All in all, an academic miasma conjuring up memories of the traditional sport of tracking tribal migrations, cf. August Otto Rühle von Lilienstern (1831) Zur Geschichte der Pelasger und Etrusker, so wie der altgriechischen und altitaalischen Völkerstämme überhaupt (online at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek).

By the following inclusion of Diodorus Siculus, living in the 2nd century BC, this miasma is most emphatically emphasized. Diodorus' report of the established border between Sicani and Sicels sort of may refer to the vague time-period 12th century BC to 5th century BC, and, when written at the 1st century BC emphasize a fantastic degree of knowledge, at that ancient time - and up to at least 1831, in our era.

All in all, these two paragraphs concern the literate evidence. Although the report from John Fine may have included references to other types of evidence, they have not followed through to what has been written in the article. It is unknown.

Now the third paragraph in Sicels#History takes over, with a citation needed lead-in. After that small detail, there is finally some, very discrete, mention of newer types of evidence: archaeological and epigraphical. Basically, what opens up here, metaphorically, is an open-ended and truly aspiring subject theme, that comprise mentions of the myth of the Sea peoples - a quote from that article:

Following the creation of the concept in the nineteenth century, it became one of the most famous chapters of Egyptian history

- and a spurious note of "their arrival on the island between the thirteenth or eleventh century BCE" (quote from Sicels#History, third paragraph). It is a difficultly vague expression of time - either between the 13th century BC or between the 11th century. According to my personal subjective estimate, the epigraphic empiri - the name Shekelesh - must be a conjectural element in relation to the article topic. The epigraphy is concrete, the meaning of the inscription - every single little word - is not. And I strongly presume the archaeological evidence must likewise be deemed conjectural, in the specific context of detailing the history of the Sicels. Something occured in that 13th or 11th century BC, as manifest as to have been relatively conserved through 3 millenia, untill their discovery in our modern era. That this ancient material happening should be interpreted in a certain exact fashion is really an aspiring theme, but, stylistically speaking, the paragraph lead-in is not so out-of-place.

The trailing two-sentence paragraph refer to the Sicel necropolis of Pantalica, and that article verify the time focus, which is now solidly placed in the 2nd millenium BC. Is this time focus to be inferred for the preceding descriptions of Sicels - glimpsed from Polybius, from the homeric narrative, from Thucydides and Diodorus Siculus? Is this the time focus intended by our modern day John Fine?

If that be the case - and I interject to note that it is so, implicitly - then I worry that a possible 'point-of-view' or 'original research' is reflected. How to make the old and traditionalist literate evidence, including the biblical sources, come through and mesh up with the new kinds of empiri - sort of a production of empiri - is a polemical theme, and noteworthy. But I am not able to give any reference to this notion of notability. Perhaps it is me who is at fault. The vaguish fashion of time focus written into Sicels#History confirm my worry. I find further confirmation in the phrases found at the article describing the necropolis of Pantalica. The Italian point-of-view, as expressed here(italy1), or here(italy2), has its academic claim from the studies of Paolo Orsi, and establish an association between Greeks, Mycenaeans, the topographic location of Pantalica and the time frame 13th - 11th century BC. The unescoic point-of-view, as expressed here, cursorily surf over mentioning the so-called Anaktoron of Pantalica as Byzantine, belonging to a bewilderingly different time frame. But from this here superficial online research, the unescoic point-of-view has no basis in academic literature!?!

The clinch of the matter, as expressed in the article describing the necropolis of Pantalica, retell our ancient times - in Sicily - by the Italian point-of-view. The full association-list not only covers Greeks, Mycenaeans, Sicilian topography and the 13th to 11th century BC, but also manage to include Sicels. In the real Italian version, as following Orsi's studies, the Sicels must be understood as Mycenaean (see italy1, above). However, this association has somehow slipped away from the article describing the necropolis of Pantalica. The less dramatic Italian point-of-view (italy2) gloss over the association to the Mycenaeans (Italian: con i commercianti provenienti da Micenes) and assuredly and carefree also associate the Sicels with this archaeological testimony - the necropolis of Pantalica - and it is this less dramatic version that is mostly reflected in both of articles Sicels and Necropolis of Pantalica. The article text of Necropolis of Pantalica actually manage to mention both terms 'Mycenaean' and 'Byzantine', whereas the article text of Sicels just mentions 'Mycenaean'. The Mycenaeans conceptualization is modern, and one notorious problem in this context, see following paragraphs.

But the Mycenaean association is probably ok, and via this, also a Cretan association, and via this, also an Egyptian association. There is some logic, and as well empiri, to associating the Urnfield culture and early Hallstatt culture (/Hallstatt-period) with influx from the Italian coast, an influx of goods and then some. For the Iron Age, cf. Wolfgang Artner (2013), "Von Hallstatt auf dem Weg nach Süden Grabfunde vom Kulm bei Aigen im Ennstal, Obersteiermark, sowie Funde der Hallstatt- und Früh-La-Tène-Zeit zwischen Öden- und Hallstätter See", Fundberichte aus Österreich (in German), 51, Verlag Ferdinand Berger & Söhne Ges.m.b.H.: 61–87, ISSN 0429-8926. For earlier trading activities, no references; but likely goods are tin and glass pearls. These activities have raison, and as well empiri - including tin and glass, I'm sure - to associating the mercantile activities, by all means liberal, in Egypt with these European topographies. What else might have followed in the trail of goods is always a good question, but some trivial form of good old-fashioned marxian or liberal accumulation is likely.

The best example hereof, empirically speaking, comes from the Cretan palace period, with all the time-typical marks of a Mesopotamian-Egyptian social model. It is just that while there is a whole iceberg of fiscal networks below (actually, around) the great cities of Egypt and Mesopotamia, Cretan palaces, on the other hand, and even more their Mycenaean counterparts, are less integrated, in chronography and in geography. The fascinating palace milieu, with goods and gold, architecture and writing, is somehow happening, just so. The early palaces in Crete belong to the beginnings of the 2nd millenium BC.

One of the early escavators, and prominent for normalizing the relative Minoan chronology, Arthur Evans, and a contemporary to Orsi, has drawn attention to similar types of sepulture constructions, in Crete and in the Italian region, dating this material phenomenon to the late middle of the 2nd millenium BC. ( cf. Arthur Evans (1906), The prehistoric tombs of Knossos, London: Societates Antiquariorum Londonensis) A much less known personae, Fimmen, also contemporary with Orsi and Evans, seek to profile certain ceramic artefacts, namely Bügelkannen, that as well show stylistic likeness across a wider region; Italy, Greece, the Aegean islands and Egypt.

Even though there is, or must be, a sort of beginning, somewhere in the early 2nd millenium, it is still only when describing ancient Crete that this history - beginning - can be profiled. A beginning of assimilation.

It is also on this note of assimilation that the modern research into the adaptive and assimilating nature of the early middle ages is of interest. The medievalist concern in this topic has especially been focused on the literate conceptualisations of ethnic appelations. Basically, what this means in a mediterranean context in the bronze age, is that mythologies may hold more true, especially the old ones. The concept-scenario, kind of archetypical, of the prince and his hirdsmen, is not only reflected in the Aenead (Vergil, 2nd century BC) but also in the modern-academic coinage ethnogenese (Wenskus, ca. 1960) and more thought-provoking in the Han-archives, somewhere in the first half of the 1st millenium, our era, describing the north-eurasian warrior-groups. Perhaps there is also some likenes to the drama in the Odysee. And so it is, that the liberal, dislodged, fractured, disrupted settlement patterns of glossy habitats - or just, the Minoan and Mycenaean palace settlements - must translate to this scheme of serious freetrading, which does in history and Wirkungsgeschichte always include a certain measure of Gewalttätigkeit. Freetraders are natural founders, and the Americas could be the prior example - speaking from an empirical perspective. The geography of the mediterranean coastal regions - the Adriatic and Aegean included - facilitate those opportune settlements. In the archaic and classic age this settlement pattern has become a structural pattern in the Greek societas - most aptly phrased, the Greek-language environment, although seemingly predated by the Levantine approach, the punic settlers. A search for ethnicity is a blind alley, leading to a wall of self-reflecting questioning of how to define ethnos, where, when and why. The identity is really very willfull although presumably the progressing conglomerated atmosphere, beginning at the dark ages prior to both Greek archaics and Etruscan thrift, furthers a certain stasis.

Describing the Sicels must be a literate subject, and it should be discernible, in explicit form, from the modern empiri-products, summarily subsumed as archaelogical data. A synthesis betwixt the two would be optimal, but the synthesis should not be the ideal and motive to justify speculation. The reference in the intro to Magna Graecia might be one example of speculative content, imprecise time allocation and, as root cause, the disproportionate emphasis on ethnos - ie. is Magna Graecia really Greek, or just a Roman retrospective of a distant age, and how to weigh in the linguistic estimate of Siculan language as italic?

Just to show off the enlightening perspective obtained by reading oldish material - first decade of 20th century - in this present day time horizon, these Sea peoples could well be the very same folks that appear in todays literature as victims of the Sea People - excepting the Egyptians. For it is the Egyptians that hold up against some seafaring rallies, and just after this happens, some small centuries after the Hyksos regime has fallen, there is to be noted an Egyptian presence, by way of some elite artefacts, the Tuthmosis-scarabs found distributed in the Mycene, Adriatic and Cretan regions - roughly ca. the 12th century BC. Cf. especially Diedrich Fimmen (1909), Zeit und dauer der kretisch-mykenischen kultur (in German), Leipzig ; Berlin: B. G. Teubner, pp. 1–104. It is quite natural and logical to 'confound' or merge the notion of Sea peoples with the sea-faring folks of the 2nd millenium, already known as Mycenaeans and Cretans. And, refreshingly also the Sicels, when the association to the 'Shekelesh' appelative is thought to hold true. But it is not a question of ethnos (should not be), but instead one of searching for structural patterns. Sechinsic (talk) 21:01, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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