Da Phylakopi a Saturo: che cosa abbiamo imparato sul rito in archeologia?

Colin Renfrew’s 1985 publication of the sanctuary of Phylakopi, on the island of Melos (Cyclades), can be considered to some extent the paradigmatic beginning of the modern archaeology of cult. Starting from that experience, which had the merit of trying to identify, even if in a schematic way, the archaeological indicators of the ritual, we propose a reflection on the relationship between archaeology and cult, using as case-study the site of Satyrion (Apulia, Taranto) and its acropolis sanctuary, under investigation since 2011. In this perspective, the juxtaposition between Phylakopi and Satyrion proposed in the title is not intended to establish forced comparisons between culturally and chronologically distant situations, but is rather an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between theory and practice in archaeological research on the cult, on the possibility of identifying and applying models, on the difficulty of interpreting material data in relation to the religious system, by definition immaterial.