The Celestial Dog
Stellar alignments hypothesised in the Neolithic.
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Research programme
Celestial Syracuse
A research programme on sky, water and landscape from prehistory to Archimedes
From the possible monumentalisation of the sky to its mechanisation.
Syracuse and its territory offer, within a narrow radius, places where the relationship between sky, water and rock appears in very different forms, distant from one another in time. This programme holds them together as objects of study, without claiming a direct historical continuity of thousands of years between them.
The objects of the programme
The Pillirina
Aperture, light and water in a sea cave.
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Rutta ’e Ciauli
A cavity in the Syracusan territory.
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Nymphaeum
Cave and spring on the slope of the Greek theatre.
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Pantalica
The rock, the gorges and the Anaktoron.
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Antikythera and Archimedes
The mechanisation of the sky.
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Rutta ’e Ciauli
A cavity in the Syracusan territory included in the programme. Entry in preparation: coordinates, state of documentation and bibliography will be published here.
Nymphaeum
Cave and spring on the slope of the Greek theatre of Syracuse, one of the three points of the Celestial Dog system. Entry in preparation.
Pantalica
The rock, the gorges of the Anapo and the Calcinara, and the Anaktoron. Entry in preparation.
Hydraulic and underground landscape
Springs, conduits, cisterns, latomies and natural cavities form a system that crosses different epochs and constitutes the material context common to several objects of the programme.
Declared limit
The programme gathers objects distant from one another in time. It does not claim a direct historical continuity between prehistory and the Hellenistic age: the formula “from monumentalisation to mechanisation” describes two ways of treating the sky, not a line of transmission.