ArcheoLogica Data 3/2023

The paper aims to introduce a newly updated list of 262 absolute dates available today for the prehistory of Sicily uploaded in the Mappa Open Data repository. The Calib_Sicily dataset represents the organic attempt to collect all the AMS and radiocarbon determinations published so far for the period ranging from the Early Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. For a long time, radiocarbon dates had a limited impact on the definition of the chronologies of prehistoric Sicily. In the last decades, however, many projects have adopted a multidisciplinary approach, including a more extensive reliance on absolute dating. The Calib_Sicily dataset has been compiled precisely to register the present state of the art for about 5.000 years (6.500-1.500 cal BCE). It contains, where available, the reference to each sample’s cultural, archaeological, and stratigraphic context. Its critical evaluation also evidences a series of blanks in the chronological range, pinpointing geographical areas and specific periods or contexts where it will be necessary to invest resources and investigations. The project consists of two distinct phases. In the first, careful and in-depth research was carried out in the vast literature concerning the island’s prehistory, collecting and standardising all the published dates obtained from archaeological sites distributed throughout Sicily and the neighbouring islands. Thanks to the collaborative support of many colleagues, it also contains a series of unpublished dates. Calib_Sicily will further develop in a direction currently defined only preliminarily: however, it aims to make resources, specialists, and laboratories available to proceed with a new and exhaustive dating campaign as part of future research on the Sicilian prehistory, as well as to carry out targeted samplings in excavated contexts but never subjected to radiocarbon measurements. The final purpose thus is to increase the number of dates to fill those gaps highlighted in the current dataset through new field research and laboratory analysis, a vital step to revise our understanding of the complex dynamics of the prehistoric occupation of Sicily.