Archaeological Area
The Stretto district is located 2 kilometers away the town of Partanna on the east side and is made up of a calcarenitic ridge oriented north-southward. The central part of the relief is transversally cut by the provincial road which links up Partanna with Salaparuta and Poggioreale, where is located the excavation produced by the no more working calcarenitic pit.
The ditch has been found in such an altered context, or more precisely the portions which survived to the destruction, witnessing the original complex system.
After the finding, the Soprintendenza BB.CC.AA. of Trapani, has carried out some excavation campaigns which have made possible the recovery of the rocky handiwork and to study the great amount of material recovered inside the filling.
Ceramic, lithic and osteological materials of complex evaluation have been found through a stratigraphic excavation and are currently exposed at the Museo Archeologico della Preistoria del Basso Belice in the Grifeo Castle of Partanna.
The exploration of the area towards the valley, along the stream of the Binaia torrent, characterized by a luxuriant wild vegetation, has highlighted other parts of the ditch cut into the rock where still flows the water. It seems that such parts of the ditch helped to convey the water, directing them from a preexisting western channel.
Both the existence of this complex structural system and the finds of Stretto witness the presence in the settlement, during the Neolithic Age, of a complex and advanced society endowed with a differentiated and specialized productive structure able to realize great works in the territory and devoted to agriculture and to cultural exchanges.
Within the area there is also a wide rocky necropolis with many graves excavated into the calcarenitic sidewalls of the hill dating back to the Bronze Age. Other similar necropolis complexes can be found in the neighbouring districts and all over the municipal territory, which findings cover a wide ark of time of the Sicilian Prehistory. In spite of the frequent violations of the graves by the smugglers, it has been possible to recover a significant ceramic outfit dating back to the Bronze Age as well as an interesting specimen of a skull which underwent a drill while was still in life – a common medical practice attested in ancient time – among the burials present in the T1 grave.
