Le iscrizioni dei cristiani a Siracusa: narrazione e materialità di una comunità

The first part of the paper develops a summary analysis of the Syracusan epigraphic evidence to trace the indications for a progressive transition from traditional custom to new epigraphic habits and formulas of a mature Christian community, considering both the documents coming from communal cemeteries and private hypogea. In the second part we consider firstly the issues related to the conditions of conservation and physical accessibility of the epigraphic material and the implications of this for epigraphic study, summarising the history of the main corpora and publications. Secondly, we illustrate the ongoing research activities within the I.Sicily and Crossreads projects, aimed at the inclusion of the Christian documentation of Syracuse in a digital epigraphic corpus of ancient Sicily, outlining the prospects and advantages for research. The third part of the paper focuses on one of the Crossreads sub-projects, dedicated to investigating aspects of the materiality of the Sicilian epigraphic documents, through the systematic and in situ acquisition of chemical data using non-invasive methods (X-ray fluorescence). These analyses, combined with the high magnification imaging with a digital microscope, make it possible to investigate, at least as a preliminary, aspects relating to the provenance of the stone materials and to the techniques used in the production of Christian funerary epigraphy in Syracuse