Iera Oikia. Archaeological Evidence of Religious Experience in a 'Sacred House' of a Sicilian Greek Colony

In Magna Graecia and Sicily, some religious practices are strictly related to local civic associations and neighborhood groups (e.g. phratriai, gene, phylai, etc.). Among these phenomena that belong—as the official polyadic cults—to the complex and varied mosaic of religious experiences of the Western Greek colonies, may be included the so-called ‘sacred house’. Combining new perspectives and paradigms of research deriving from ‘lived ancient religion’ with the recent iconographic re-contextualization of red-figure pottery coming from a particular area of the plateau of Himera (a Greek colony located in Sicily), we are able to recognize evidence of some very peculiar religious experiences related to the Western Greek world of the 5th century BCE. Indeed, in the ‘sacred house’ of Himera, it is possible to appreciate a figurative and narrative strategy very close to that usually employed for the public sanctuary, with artefacts, furniture and, above all, in-depth attention paid to the scenery surrounding the worshippers. This case-study demonstrates that it is necessary to rethink the concept of ‘sacred space’ belonging to the community, which has often been conceived more narrowly within the limits of a circumscribed and architectually elaborated physical sanctuary.