Risultati preliminari sulla possibile individuazione della Mutatio Gelasium lungo la via romana Catania-Agrigento (It. Provinciarum Antonini Augusti n. 88).

As is well known, the possible paths of Roman road tracks often have as their confirmation the land and sea routes re- ported on the Itinerarium Provinciarum Antonini Augusti (Parthey and Pinder, 1848) and those reported of the Tabula Peutingeriana (Miller, 1964). A recent monograph on the archae- ological area of the city of Morgantina (Bruno, 2017), addresses the theme of the extra-urban viability of the city which, ac- cordingtothereconstructions,likelyhas been located near the route of the Itin- erarium Provinciarum Antonini Augusti n. 88 Catania-Agrigento, at least until the beginning of the fourth century d.C. In the monograph the author, based on topographic data and historical sources, reconstructs the road layout and the pos- sible locations of mansiones and/or muta- tiones along it. In particular, accrediting a possible key to reading of the It. Ant. Aug. n. 88 advanced by another researcher (Bonacini, 2010), he hypothesizes the ex- istence of a Mutatio Gelasium and places it inside the Chora di Morgantina. Inordertoascertaintheexistenceand exact location of the Mutatio Gelasium, along the aforementioned road layout, surveys and sampling of earthenware for mineralogical-petrographic analyses in the laboratory were performed. The first phase the survey consisted of a geomorphological study, aimed at defining the plano-altimetric character- istics of the Roman road section between the Mansiones Capitonianis and the Mu- tatio Gelasium and of the litotypes out-cropping along the same path. In the second phase, the reliefs were concen- trated in the area around the Masseria Belmontino Sottano, in the homony- mous district, and consisted of an aero- fotogrammetric survey conducted with drone and in the sampling of terracotta samples on which petrographic analyses were conducted on thin section, through a polarized light transmitted microscope, and X-ray diffractometry. The results obtained, although pre- liminary,areveryencouragingandindi- cate the presence, in the area around the farm, of numerous traces of perimeter and/or foundation walls of buildings made up of several square-shaped com- partments placed side by side. The analyses carried out on the finds of earthenware indicate that all the sam- ples analysed show petrographic charac- teristics common to those of Greco-Ro- man terracotta in central-eastern Sicily (Barone et al., 2005; Barone et al., 2012; Barone et al., 2014). The X-ray diffrac- tometric analyses have shown the pres- ence of quartz, hematite and k-feldspar also of new Ca-silicatic phases (anor- thite, diopside and sporadic gehlenite) which indicate cooking temperatures close to 850° C. Considering the preliminary nature of these analyses, it can however be af- firmed that the mineralogical-petro- graphic characteristics and the cooking temperatures of the analysed samples are similar to those of terracotta, of sure local production, used in Morgantina to realize various types of bricks, water pipes and domestic or votive handworks (Atzori et al., 1995; Bruno, 2017). The hypothesis of the existence of a Mutatio Gelasium and its location inside the Chora di Morgantina, along the Ro- man road that from Catania to Agrigen- to, passing through the Capitonianis and Philosophianis Mansiones, mentioned in the It. Ant. Aug. n. 88, seems to be strong- ly supported by the material evidence found in the site investigated and by the results of laboratory analyses conducted ontheterracottastakenthere.However,a definitive confirmation could come from archaeological excavation essays.