The endless expanses of olive trees climb everywhere in this land scorched by the sun. Here, a stone's throw from Sciacca, close to Corleone, in the Alto Verdura and Gebbia district, in the province of the Parthenon of Agrigento, infinity dominates, that of villages marked by time and by never plastered bricks. Arriving in Villafranca Sicula is like climbing into the stories of Inspector Montalbano, grappling with the mysteries narrated by Andrea Camilleri. The rows of prickly pears, in this stretch to the south of the main island, facing more towards Africa than Italy, have always prevented the ordinance fences, coloring the borders of the respected farms with a distant look . Coming across number 51, in via delle Rovine, is like crossing a brush of white in a crossroads of ruins and exposed concrete.
Not even a note
There isn't even a business card on the facade, the placards and signs are not for a discreet and silent town. The roads that overlook the countryside are burned by time and by potholes patched up as best they can. In this nook of 1,377 souls, those officially registered in the registry office of the Municipality, in the heart of deepest Sicily, Venezia srl, a building company specializing in archaeological excavations, is registered. For some time now she has officially been the owner of the archaeological excavations in the most delicate and important hill in Sardinia, that of the Giants, in Mont'e Prama, in the Sinis hermitage, in the municipality of Cabras.
490 km from the Giants
Four hundred and ninety kilometres, pretending you arrive along the air line. In reality the distance, considering the tortuosity of the roads to reach the Palermo-Cagliari ferry, passing through Corleone, is abysmal. Only a daredevil can choose to make money and even earn from an excavation campaign in a handkerchief of land set in a totally unexplored hill, or almost so, on the other side of the sea. Yet there was nothing to be done: Vincenzo Venezia, owner of the company of the same name in Villafranca Sicula, was the winner of the tender called by the Ministry of Culture through the regional secretariat for Sardinia.
The miracle of luck
It's a long step from the land of olive trees to that of the Giants, but the discount with which the company was awarded the work made the difference. With millimeter precision it hit the anomalous offer threshold, 25.55334%. In practice, with a sort of average between the highest and lowest bids, the threshold within which to entrust the works was defined. The man from Villafranca Sicula unleashed an infinitesimal fortune by winning the tender with a reduction of 25.35%. Therefore, in the land of the Giants, after a gestation of the contract lasting more than six months, a company will arrive from Sicily, with the "joy" of all the island archaeologists, the Sardinian ones, who perhaps had hoped to be able to work in the hills of Mont'e Prama. One could say, but there was a race. Yes, certainly. But it is also true that we are talking about a site which, due to its delicacy and relevance, certainly cannot be liquidated with a tender to the lowest possible price with an average on the anomalous offer. Were there other ways? Of course yes. These are those methods of managing research and excavations that some of the state offices oppose without half measures, i.e. the assignment of archaeological works to the Sardinian universities, those of Cagliari and Sassari.
Sardinian archaeologists out and about
Many don't like the fact that Sardinian universities have been the only ones, in the last decade, but also before, to know how to innovate archaeological research and excavation methods, demonstrating their effectiveness in terms of findings and scientific approach. The result is served: a Sicilian enterprise in the land of Giants. Of course, it cannot be said that the amount of the contract is one to be astounded: the stuff of state alms, just 265 thousand euros. An excavation work that will "block" the excavation area for a year, aware of the fact that it will be impossible to get other subjects to work on such a limited area.
Biblical times & almsgiving
The contract is one of those with long terms, with ministerial alms crawling like a snail in the Mont'e Prama construction site. If they are taken large in the offices of the ministry: duration of the contract or term of execution 365 natural and consecutive days starting from the date of the report of delivery of the works. Anyone who has a minimum of practicality in the management of construction sites can well understand that that paltry sum leaves no way out: it is a job that has a single purpose, wasting more time with respect to critical issues that continue to be blatantly evaded. Despite amazing promises of imminent construction sites that never start, of significant works that dwell only in perennial inconclusiveness, the site of the Giants is always a modest patch of land of less than one hectare, without any serious development, fruition and, especially expansion. The announced but never completed expropriation of the areas around the enclosed space has been lost over time. Nobody says or formally communicates the reasons for that delay, which adds to the scandal of those lands around the discovery of the Giants, first authorized for the planting of a mammoth vineyard by the Superintendence, and then, after the entry into production of the vines , declared, as if it were a miracle, of archaeological interest.
Treasury damage
Timescales for authorization of vineyards, declarations of archaeological interest, and expropriation procedures deserve far different evaluations, by several state bodies, starting from the most evident effect: the tax damage. In this case, in fact, the land will no longer be paid for with a purely agricultural valuation, but will have to be compensated, absurdly, as highly profitable vineyards, with all that follows in terms of increased public money disbursement. Design competitions will be of no use if the boundary of the area subject to future excavations and the archaeological emergencies that may emerge remain undefined, as is still the case today. In practice we continue to spend a sea of public money on holiday trips, without any serious and concrete strategy, "promoting" a site reduced to a pile of grass and decay.
"Forest" of the Giants
If you follow the sparse white-brown-tourist signs that at the entrance to Cabras indicate the site of Mont'e Prama, more than a hill, you risk finding an Amazon forest, with grass that extends far beyond the fence and obscures even the horizon. to that camera perched three meters high. The images we reproduce are eloquent, but not as much as the direct and devastating impact with that area, considered by most to be the cradle of the Nuragic civilization, capable of rewriting important pages of Mediterranean statuary. It seems that, after the " Damnatio memoriae " which devastated the Giants, now in the Sinis hills a real indifference has broken down which prevents even a single minimum respect, cultural, archaeological and even moral, of that site and its history . The scarring on the sign indicating the area as the site of a Romanesque itinerary was removed with serious delay, but the scenario that awaits the unfortunate visitor leaves no room for doubt: degradation and indifference to the millenary history of the Nuraghi Island. Meanwhile, the holiday group does not stop. The new mission for one of the millennial statues is New York this time. So much for the experts who have explained in every way that such a delicate heritage should not move under any circumstances. The synthesis is crucial: degradation on the hills of the Giants, complete with a prize holiday in the Big Apple. The new foreign expedition to Manhattan has not yet revealed the names and surnames of the companions of the Giants, while the costs of this new mission remain a mystery. In Mont'e Prama, meanwhile, decay and abandonment are growing.