KTISEIS. Fondazioni d’Occidente. Intrecci culturali tra Gela, Agrigento, Creta e Rodi, Atti delle XIV Giornate Gregoriane (Agrigento, Museo Archeologico, 25-27 novembre 2022)

The volume KTISEIS collects the proceedings of the international conference held in Agrigento in November 2022 as part of the XIV Giornate Gregoriane. The conference, organised to coincide with the celebration of the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of Akragas, was a valuable opportunity for dialogue, discussion and updating on the subject of the Greek foundations of the West, with a special focus on Akragas of course, but also on Gela, the motherland of Akragas, Rhodes and Crete, the protagonists of the joint venture that directly or indirectly led to the birth of the two big poleis of Sicily. It is precisely the cultural 'entanglements' between Crete, Rhodes, Gela and Akragas that are the subject of careful re-examination in this volume, also in the light of the most recent results of archaeological research and new methodological perspectives. The backdrop of the interweaving is the Mediterranean as a space of intense mobility and connectivity, of cultural interaction between different societies and the formation of multiple identities in the context of a complex centuries-long history, that of the Western Greeks, for the understanding of which any Manichean contrappings, between Greeks and Indigenous peoples, between Rhodians and Cretans, are now inappropriate.