flint knives and a fragment of
obsidian.

These discoveries show that the heel of Italy fell under the influence
which caused the spread of the megalithic monuments, whatever that
influence may have been. The same influence may also have been
responsible for the bronze age rock-hewn tombs of Matera in the
Basilicata, each of which is surrounded by a circle of fairly large
stones.

Geographical considerations would lead one to suppose that the same
conditions existed in Sicily, and it is possible that this was the case.
Yet it is an affirmation which must be made with great reserve.
Megalithic monuments in the ordinary sense of the term are unknown in
Sicily. There are, however, four tombs in the south-east of the island
which show some affinity to megalithic work. Two of these were found by
Orsi at Monteracello. They were rectangular chambers built of squared
slabs of limestone set on edge. At one end of the finer of the two was a
small opening or window cut in the upright slab. This same grave
contained a skeleton lying on the right side with the legs slightly
contracted. These two tombs can hardly be described as dolmens; they
seem to have had no cover-slabs, and the blocks, which were small, were
let into the earth, scarcely appearing above the surface. Taken by
themselves the Monteracello tombs would hardly prove the presence of the
megalithic civilization in Sicily. However, in the valley called Cava
Lazzaro there is a rock-hewn tomb where the vertical face of the rock in
which the tomb is cut has been shaped into a curved facade, a very usual
feature of megalithic architecture. This is ornamented on each side of
the entrance of the tomb with four pilasters cut in relief in the solid
rock, each pair being connected by a semicircular arch also in relief.
On the pilasters is incised a pattern of circles and V-shaped signs. A
somewhat similar arrangement of pilasters is seen in two rock-tombs at
Cava Lavinaro in the same district. This work forcibly recalls the work
of the megalithic builders in the hypogeum of Halsaflieni in Malta (see
Chap. VII), and on the facades of the Giants' Tombs in Sardinia (see
below). It affords, at any rate, a presumption that in all three
islands we have to deal with the same civilization if not the same
people.

Such a presumption is not weakened by the fact that in Sicily the usual
form of tomb was the rock-hewn sepulchre, which, as will be seen later,
is very often a concomitant of