Page - 51 - in The Power of Urban Water - Studies in premodern urbanism

NicolaChiarenza 4 Water, Social SpaceandArchitecture atSelinous: theCaseof theUrbanSanctuary Abstract: The urban sanctuary of Selinous rose on theAcropolis plateau, over an area rich in fresh water and close to themarshy lagoon of the river Cottone’s estuary. Even if no cult of water andwater deities is archaeologically known, thewaterscape influenced both the life of the settlement and the sanctuary in several ways. This paper analyses the architectural and spatial developmentof Selinous’ urbansanctuary, linking thedataabout itswater installations withknowledgeon theuseofwater inGreek rituals andpublic spaces. Theaim is to introduce hypotheses contributing to better understanding the role played by water in Selinous’ urban sanctuary. Moreover, the paper takes into account the iconographies of coinage and literary sources fromSelinous tocompare themwith thedataabout thesettlement’swaterscape.Water installa- tionswithin the sanctuaryofSelinoushadnoaestheticvalueanddidnotarchitecturallydefine religiousandsocial space.Nevertheless, lustralwater,with itsproperagency,mighthaveacted in social space andduring ritual activities important to create a shared senseof community. Introduction TheGreekcolonyofSelinouswas foundedbyMegaraHyblaea in the last quarterof the7th cen- turyBC. Itwas locatedbetweentworiversonthesouthwestcoastofSicily. Inantiquity, its land- andwaterscapewere rather different fromwhatwe see today (Fig. 1). The settlement consisted of the Acropolis plateau, theManuzza hill behind it, thewestern area – nowadays known as Gaggera–andtheeasternhill.Thecentral ridgewasseparated fromtheouterareasby theriver Modione (the ancient Selinus) to thewest, and the river Cottone to the east – bothwith large andirregularestuaries.Thus, theAcropolisplateaulookedlikeapeninsulabetweentwonarrow lagoonsconnected to thesea.EspeciallyCottonebay, to theeastof theAcropolis,wasa lagoon- Fig. 1:Planof Selinouswith hypothetical reconstructionof the rivers’mouths. WS: approximate locationsofwater springs. OpenAccess.©2020NicolaChiarenza, publishedbyDeGruyter. Thiswork is licensedunder theCreative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110677065-004