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Clapham Junction

As in the Maltese site Misrah Ghar Il-Kbir, also in the Targia and Granatari Vecchi districts the cart ruts intersect and cross each other in a similar way to the track switches in a railway station. The nickname Clapham Junction that was given by David H. Trump to the Maltese site, derives precisely from the similarity with the famous English railway station. For Sagona these are agricultural furrows and water channels, for Mottershead, Pearson and Schaefer these are abandoned paths due to obstacles and wear. Obviously we do not know what the morphology of the Syracuse and Rosolini territory was at times when the cart ruts were traced, but considering the current context, there certainly would have been no agricultural reason to build them, given the presence of fertile land, springs and fresh water courses just a few kilometers away. Furthermore, considering the size of the Targia site (which, calculated with Google Earth, is about 5 hectares, therefore at least double the size of the analogous Maltese site), how many obstacles would they have had to encounter before deciding to change area? In any case, at least in one point at Targia one has a clear impression that three pairs of sunken tracks converge into one, similarly to what happens today in a train station.

Sea level

In the Pizzuta district, the cart ruts that runs along the cliff, close to the sea, is interrupted by the detachment of a large section of rock, which remained lying on the rocks below: it would be interesting to understand when this detachment occurred. In any case, given the excessive proximity of certain sections of the cart ruts to the cliff's precipice, a situation that goes hand in hand with the erosion of the area that probably once hosted the structures of the port of Eloro, of which potential evidence can be found in the (dangerous...) path that runs alongside the ancient Syracusan sub-colony, the coastal landscape must have appeared very different from today. Of course, as already mentioned and as demonstrated by an interesting study on the now submerged fish markets of some Roman villas, the sea level, two thousand years ago, was on average 1.2 meters lower.
The cart ruts of contrada Pizzuta, which today seems to run a little too dangerously along the sea, probably originally was not right next to it.

A widespread problem

The cart ruts problem does not only concern the uncertainty about how, when and by whom these furrows were traced, but also concerns some details, in the surroundings, that have no apparent logical explanation. For example, there are dense lines traced on the rock, which recall the tracks left on the ground by a tracked vehicle (found, in particular, at Granatari Vecchi and Noto Antica); or, next to many furrows there is a border, which we have already mentioned, with respect to which it is not clear what indirect mechanism could have caused it or, if created intentionally, what its purpose would have been; or again, in particular at Porta Scea, in Targia, in the middle of a stretch of roadway, transverse lines are found every 70 centimetres. Above all, the problem of cart ruts concerns the fact that they are not only present in places colonised by the Greeks or Romans, but they seem to be widespread throughout the world.

Click here to read THE PROBLEMATIC EDGES OF THE CART RUTS RUTS