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Introduction. The clinical course of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is highly heterogenous, ranging from asymptomatic to fatal forms. The identification of clinical and laboratory predictors of poor prognosis may assist clinicians in monitoring strategies and therapeutic decisions. Materials and Methods. In this study, we retrospectively assessed the prognostic value of a simple tool, the complete blood count, on a cohort of 664 patients ( F 260; 39%, median age 70 (56-81) years) hospitalized for COVID-19 in Northern Italy. We collected demographic data along with complete blood cell count; moreover, the outcome of the hospital in-stay was recorded. Results. At data cut-off, 221/664 patients (33.3%) had died and 453/664 (66.7%) had been discharged. Red cell distribution width (RDW) ( χ 2 10.4; p < 0.001 ), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte (NL) ratio ( χ 2 7.6; p = 0.006 ), and platelet count ( χ 2 5.39; p = 0.02 ), along with age ( χ 2 87.6; p < 0.001 ) and gender ( χ 2 17.3; p < 0.001 ), accurately predicted in-hospital mortality. Hemoglobin levels were not associated with mortality. We also identified the best cut-off for mortality prediction: a NL ratio > 4.68 was characterized by an odds ratio for in-hospital mortality OR = 3.40 (2.40-4.82), while the OR for a RDW > 13.7 % was 4.09 (2.87-5.83); a platelet count > 166,000 /μL was, conversely, protective (OR: 0.45 (0.32-0.63)). Conclusion. Our findings arise the opportunity of stratifying COVID-19 severity according to simple lab parameters, which may drive clinical decisions about monitoring and treatment.

In this paper we present a bibliographical list of works published between 2002 and 2015 which have focused on women and gender in ancient Near Eastern studies. In addition to the list, we also provide an introduction in which we consider the relationship between women’s studies and gender studies and present a selection of the trends and theoretical positions which have emerged since the late 1980s either inside the framework of gender studies, or in closely related fields such as queer studies, postcolonial studies and feminist epistemologies – the predominant trends in the time span covered by this overview. We hope that this work will provide ancient Near Eastern scholars with a useful research tool.

The provocation test (PT) with the suspected drug represents the gold standard in the diagnosis of non-IgE hypersensitivity reactions to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Nevertheless, there is no consensus regarding the clinical management of suspected NSAID-sensitive patients. This study assessed if a PT with the suspected drug is a reliable and safe proceeding to confirm NSAID hypersensitivity in patients with a clinical history of urticaria/angioedema (Urt/AE). It also analyzed different patient characteristics (such as gender, age, atopy, dermographism, time interval between the last drug reaction, and number of previous NSAID reactions) in relation to PT positivity. One hundred fifty-nine patients with Urt/AE apparently related to assumption of one or more NSAIDs underwent PT with the suspected drugs. Moreover, to distinguish single/multiple NSAID reactivity in patients who did not tolerate the offending NSAID, another strong cyclooxygenase-1 inhibitor PT was performed. PT was negative in 142/159 patients (89.31%), ruling out a diagnosis of NSAIDs hypersensitivity; 17/159 patients (10.69%) experienced a reaction of Urt/AE during the PT: 8 patients were diagnosed as single reactors to NSAIDs and 4 as multiple reactors to NSAIDs. Those with a history of multiple NSAID reactions and male patients were both more likely to have a positive PT. Our results suggest that in all patients with history of NSAID cutaneous reactions, the NSAID hypersensitivity should be confirmed by an oral PT and that the diagnostic proceeding can safely start with the offending NSAID.

Drug provocation tests (DPTs) are the gold standard in diagnosing nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) hypersensitivity; however, only few data about follow-up of patients with negative DPTs are actually available. The aim of this study was to assess patients' behavior in taking NSAIDs again and to evaluate NSAID tolerability after negative allergological workup. This is a follow-up study involving patients evaluated for history of cutaneous reactions (urticaria and or angioedema) after NSAID intake and with negative DPTs with the suspected NSAID. Patients were asked during a phone interview about the intake of NSAIDs, tolerance, or reasons of avoidance. The negative predictive value (NPV) of NSAIDs DPTs was calculated. One hundred eleven of 142 patients were successfully contacted; 46/111 (41.44%) took the same NSAID previously tested with two adverse reactions reported (4.34%). Fifty-three of 111 (47.74%) patients did not take the same NSAID, but 34 of them took at least another strong cyclooxygenase (COX) 1 inhibitor, with 1 adverse reaction (2.94%) and 19 of them took only weak COX-1 inhibitors. Twelve of 111 patients (10.8%) did not take any NSAID. Reasons for drug avoidance were mainly fear of reactions (70.8%) and no need (29.2%). NPV, overall, was 96.97% (95% confidence interval, 91-99%). Although NSAID hypersensitivity diagnosis was ruled out by oral provocation test, the majority of patients with a history of urticaria/angioedema avoided the intake of the tested NSAIDs for fear of new reactions, particularly when strong COX-1 inhibitor NSAIDs were involved. The high NPV value of DPT resulting from this study should reassure NSAID intake.

Il contributo si propone di dare una lettura dello scritto giovanile di Marx sulla "Legge relativa ai furti di legna" pubblicato sulla Gazzetta Renana nel 1842 anche attraverso l'incontro con gli scritti della maturità, soprattutto il capitolo XXIV del Capitale e le bozze di lettera al Vera Zasulič evidenziando gli elementi di una prospettiva della temporalità storica stratificata e plurale.

I simbolismi vegetali sono ricorrenti nelle celebrazioni religiose “popolari” di santi/e, madonne, Cristi sotto vario titolo in tutta l’area euro-mediterranea, segnatamente in quelle regioni che sono state caratterizzate fino a un recente passato (e che in parte lo restano tutt’oggi) da un’economia prettamente agropastorale. Interi alberi, fronde, frutti, spighe compaiono in numerosi casi, isolati o in associazione fra loro e con altri simboli rituali propri dei patterns simbolici agrari (pani, pasti comuni, falò e cortei di torce, danze, corse, agoni, ecc.), sia come decoro di spazi e di immagini cultuali, sia assemblati in più o meno complessi artefatti (che non di rado costituiscono il simbolo centrale della festa), sia come elementi direttamente connessi, spesso sul piano della leggenda di fondazione del culto, alla sacra entit. cui la festa. dedicata. si tratta, in tutta evidenza, di simboli rituali ereditati da un remoto passato, attraverso i quali si rende esplicita la connessione umanamente avvertita tra ritmi naturali, cicli produttivi e intervento di potenze trascendenti la sfera dell’umano. Nei casi in cui ad essere costitutivi del culto del/la santo/a, della madonna, del Cristo sono gli alberi, alla dimensione vitalistica, ossia alla rappresentazione per arbores di una forza generativa che ciclicamente si rinnova coinvolgendo ogni forma di vita e pi. in generale ogni manifestazione cosmica, si associa la dimensione assiale, la concreta rappresentazione cio. di un centro che orienta lo e nello spazio e, al contempo, di un tramite attraverso il quale si realizza la comunicazione tra immanenza e trascendenza, tra mondo e ultra-mondo (celeste e infero). Questi due casi sono rispettivamente ben rappresentati da due culti mariani: quello della Madonna delle Mortelle di Villafranca sicula (Sicilia) e quello della Madonna Myrtidiotissa di Palianis (Creta).

An inextricable tangle of branches and roots arises in many Indian villages in the place where two trees united in marriage (vr̥kṣa vivāha), grow intertwining with each other in an everlasting 'embrace'. This interweaving describes well the complex network of symbols and textual references that are revealed in the relationships that Indian culture has built around a pair of trees: the aśvattha and the śamī. In this paper, I will try to highlight some mythological and ritual aspects related to this pair. The two trees, in fact, although in today's context separately, are the object of rituals that turn out to be true tree marriages. In particular, concerning aśvattha, what is striking is that the tree is subject to a shift-gender whereby in some contexts it, traditionally regarded as a male tree, acquires a female role within the couple. This phenomenon can find a parallel in the mythological and ritual complex that the Indian religious tradition has built around the two pieces of wood used to light the ritual fire: the araṇi. Through the analysis of some Vedic religious texts and following a diachronic reading, I will try to highlight the evolution and the transformations that this theme has undergone, but at the same time, I will try to bring out the continuity of forms that can be summed up around two hermeneutic guidelines: the foundation myths and the theme of the promotion of fertility and sexuality. In particular, I will analyze the symbolic values linked to the coupling of the two araṇi and the multiple variants that this motif has generated. Highlighting these variants means highlighting, on a mythical level, the emergence of sexuality that is not necessarily heteronormed. Indeed, these versions lead us to reflect on an arboreal nature that alludes to sexuality that bypasses and transcends gender binary and accounts for the gender fluidity found in certain contemporary arboreal 'marriages'.

In questo breve contributo proverò a introdurre il ruolo e la simbologia dell'albero nella società pantesca contemporanea in una prospettiva antropologica. Sintetizzando alcune fasi della mia ricerca sul campo sull'isola di Pantelleria, ho tentato di comprendere le dinamiche che hanno portato ai riconoscimenti Unesco della pratica della vite ad alberello e dei muretti a secco, così come al riconoscimento del giardino pantesco, e le conseguenze da questi determinate nella vita socio-economica dell’isola di Pantelleria e nell’immaginario collettivo della comunità locale e dei vari soggetti implicati. Applicando varie metodologie di indagine (interviste, osservazione partecipante, consultazione e analisi di archivi e documentazione ufficiale), mi sono focalizzato sui processi di patrimonializzazione e di trasformazione culturale, analizzando il ruolo che svolgono in questi processi di cambiamento Ente Parco, Istituzioni, agricoltori e soggetti dell’economia pantesca. In un’economia strettamente legata all’agricoltura e al turismo, l’uso di concetti come patrimonio, identità culturale, tipicità, tradizione, risulta fonda- mentale sia sul piano simbolico-discorsivo che sui processi politici ed economici. Questi concetti vengono infatti utilizzati e interpretati diversamente dai vari attori locali e istituzionali, e hanno una funzione ben precisa nei processi politici reali, come nelle attività economiche legate al turismo, agli agricoltori e alle aziende agricole. The advent of the Anthropocene, an era in which the human being has become a geological force, upsets the division of knowledge between the human and natural sciences. To understand this, it is necessary to build new forms of alliance between disciplines. This is what the phenomenon of dendrolatries also invites us to do. Widespread in every place and in every age, the cult of trees testifies how the arboreal world has shaped ways of living and thinking, being in turn transformed. To delve into the complexity of this exchange, the volume collects the fruits of the dialogue between an interdisciplinary group of researchers who explore the arboreal imaginary in three directions: that of studies on memory and contemporary heritage; that of anthropology and the history of ancient religions; and that of the aesthetic, Marxian and decolonial critique of cultural studies. In these studies, we do not find a forgotten nature that it is about rediscovering. Instead we find an assemblage of nature-cultures to rearticulate: while the ecological crisis erodes our certainties and the earth seems to slip away from under our feet, the trees, with their substratum of myths, memories, figurations and landscapes, help us to find a common thought.

This paper investigates the mythical and ritual background of Dionysus’ representation as “fir-bender” in Euripides’ "Bacchae" (ll. 1061 ff.), in an attempt to shed light not only on the dramaturgical aspects of the tragic plot, but also on the cultural categories that make this representation intelligible to the Athenian audience at the end of the fifth century BC. Following Louis Gernet’s historical-anthropological approach based on the notion of "polyvalence des images", this paper aims to define a mythical pattern – the connection between the bending of a tree and the dismemberment of a human victim – already attested in the Attic legend of Theseus and Sinis, in which both characters seem to be ‘specialised’ in bending pine trees. Through a comparative analysis of this mythical dossier it is possible to show how the Euripidean scene of the bending of the fir tree on mount Cithaeron can be interpreted as a tragic resemantisation of mythical ordeals concerning the construction of power and the performance of royal identity in archaic Greece, without necessarily postulating a "passive" reception of the Dionysian imagery or the survival of a remote Frazerian “tree-cult”.

In this introductory note I present three essays on the relationship between trees and rituals in ancient Mediterranean civilisations and in Vedic India.

Il contributo lega il rinnovato interesse per le figure e l'immaginario arboreo allo sviluppo delle environmental humanities sullo sfondo del dibattito sull'Antropocene. In particolare, introduce gli orientamenti teorici principali che sottendono lo studio delle "dendrolatrie" negli ambiti di studio della memoria e del patrimonio culturale, dell'antropologia e della storia delle religioni e nel campo dei cultural studies. The study put into perspective the renewal of interest toward trees and botanical figures with the development of environemental humanities in the framework of the Anthropocene. In particular, it introduces the main theoretical orientations undelying the study of the cults of trees in the fields of memory and heritage studies, of anthropology and history of religion and of cultural studies.

Invisibilizzazione, disumanizzazione, dolore del trauma, naufragio: la scia si produce e si riproduce in mare, in un attraversamento in cui il Mediterraneo diviene eco dell’Atlantico e viceversa. Centrale per questo riecheggiare è la memoria. La memoria di un passato che non è mai passato, che torna a fratturare il presente e continua a riprodursi in un tempo circolare della schiavitù, inteso come futuro creato da essa (Hartman 2007). E la creazione del futuro passa per la coltivazione dei semi della memoria: semi in movimento, che creano così una trama filiforme che unisce l’Atlantico Nero al Mediterraneo Nero. Depositari del passato e base per la creazione del futuro, i semi della memoria e della ri-memoria (Morrison 2018 [1987]) verranno utilizzati nelle pagine che seguono per provare a tracciare questo tempo circolare attraverso l’utilizzo di diverse figurazioni arboree che costellano lo spazio e il tempo della scia. Queste figurazioni arboree, intese come cartografie trasformative, si manifestano come dendrolatrie della scia che costituiscono gli spazi del mare del Middle Passage così come del Mediterraneo: dal sistema della piantagione, narrato nel romanzo Amatissima (Morrison, 2018 [1987]), alle navi della scia quali alberi che solcano i mari, sino ai semi della memoria, simbologia centrale dell’afrofuturismo. Una circolarità di figurazioni arboree che nei loro attraversamenti e movimenti divengono corpi, spazi, prodotti e cartografie della diaspora; una circolarità che richiama quella del tempo della schiavitù, che dal passato – che non è mai passato – frattura il presente e costruisce il futuro. Invisitization, dehumanization, pain of trauma, shipwreck: the wake is produced and reproduced in the sea, in a crossing in which the Mediterranean becomes an echo of the Atlantic and vice versa. Central to this echo is memory. The memory of a past that has never passed, that returns to fracture the present and continues to reproduce itself in a circular time of slavery, understood as the future created by it (Hartman 2007). And the creation of the future passes through the cultivation of the seeds of memory: seeds in motion, which thus create a threadlike texture that unites the Black Atlantic to the Black Mediterranean. Depositaries of the past and basis for the creation of the future, the seeds of memory and of re-memory (Morrison 2018 [1987]) will be used in the following pages to try to trace this circular time through the use of different tree figurations that dot the space and time of the wake. These arboreal figurations, understood as transformative cartographies, manifest themselves as dendrolatries of the wake that constitute the spaces of the sea of ​​the Middle Passage as well as of the Mediterranean: from the plantation system, narrated in the novel Amatissima (Morrison, 2018 [1987]), to the ships of the wake like trees that plow the seas, up to the seeds of memory, the central symbol of Afrofuturism. A circularity of arboreal figurations that in their crossings and movements become bodies, spaces, products and maps of the diaspora; a circularity that recalls that of the time of slavery, which from the past - which has never passed - fractures the present and builds the future.

Le stragi di Capaci e via D’Amelio segnano un punto di svolta nel linguaggio con cui i movimenti antimafia costruiscono la memoria pubblica della violenza mafiosa. Uno dei tratti salienti di questa svolta è la proliferazione di luoghi di memoria che ruotano intorno a figure arboree. Il capostipite di questa genealogia è l’albero Falcone, noto come punto di raccolta per le manifestazioni del 23 maggio, la giornata della legalità. Nel corso degli anni ’90, il modello memoriale costruito intorno all’albero si sviluppa e si diffonde, mentre sono sempre già frequenti le piantumazioni di alberi in memoria delle vittime della mafia. L’articolo cerca di esplicitare le forme semiotiche soggiacenti a questa dendrolatria antimafia e ai suoi modi di diffusione nel repertorio celebrativo dell’Italia contemporanea. Tirando le fila di questa ricostruzione, propone infine alcune considerazioni critiche sul rapporto tra memoria e paesaggio, sullo sfondo più generale del rapporto tra natura e cultura nell’epoca dell’Antropocene. The massacres of Capaci and via D'Amelio mark a turning point in the language with which the anti-mafia movements build the public memory of mafia violence. One of the salient features of this turning point is the proliferation of places of memory that revolve around tree figures. The progenitor of this genealogy is the Falcone tree, known as a collection point for the demonstrations of May 23, the day of legality. During the 90s, the memorial model built around the tree developed and spread, while the planting of trees in memory of the victims of the mafia is always already frequent. The article tries to explain the semiotic forms underlying this anti-mafia dendrolatry and its ways of spreading in the celebratory repertoire of contemporary Italy. Pulling the strings of this reconstruction, he finally proposes some critical considerations on the relationship between memory and landscape, against the more general background of the relationship between nature and culture in the Anthropocene era.

Per ragionare sulle dendrolatrie - le pratiche, i miti e le figure dell’immaginario arboreo - in prospettiva geografica, questo contributo sviluppa una riflessione sul bosco: figura dell’immaginario arboreo, ma anche risorsa fondamentale per territori rurali e montani. Si analizza in che modo questa risorsa sia interpretata nel contesto delle aree interne: territori gravati da deficit di sviluppo e servizi per i quali dal 2013 la Strategia Nazionale per le Aree Interne (SNAI) ha avviato interventi per adeguare i servizi e promuovere progetti di sviluppo. Si indagano diverse interpretazioni del bosco: dall'approccio conservazionista, a quello della prospettiva territorialista che considera il bosco come parte del "capitale territoriale", risorsa per lo sviluppo locale. Si descrivono in particolare le pratiche e politiche di gestione della riserva di Santa Maria del Bosco e Monte Genuardo, tra la provincia di Agrigento e di Palermo. Questo caso permette di mettere a fuoco in che modo le visioni dominanti del bosco si traducano in segni sul territorio che scrivono, cancellano e riscrivono i paesaggi boschivi. In order to reason on dendrolatries - the practices, myths and figures of the arboreal imaginary - in a geographical perspective, this contribution develops a reflection on the forest: a figure of the arboreal imaginary, but also a fundamental resource for rural and mountain territories. It analyzes how this resource is interpreted in the context of inner peripheries: territories burdened by deficits in development and services for which since 2013 the National Strategy for Internal Areas (SNAI) has launched interventions to adapt services and promote development projects. Different interpretations of the forest are investigated: from the conservationist approach, to the territorialist perspective that considers the forest as part of the "territorial capital", a resource for local development. In particular, we describe the management practices and policies of the reserve of Santa Maria del Bosco and Monte Genuardo, between the provinces of Agrigento and Palermo. This case allows us to focus on how the dominant visions of the forest are translated into signs on the territory that write, erase and rewrite wooded landscapes.

In the Sumerian and Akkadian mythological literature, the ruler of the city of Uruk, Gilgameš, uproots and/or cuts down trees on several occasions: the ḫalub-tree (mahaleb cherry) linked to the goddess Inanna and the eren (juniper)/erēnu (cedar) trees of the Forest guarded by Ḫuwawa. These trees should be understood as elements of a wider "wilderness", with which they share a powerful and ambiguous ontological otherness, as opposed to the city and the country of Sumer. In order to become useful, this otherness must be conducted in the city and subject to processes of organization. This article illustrates the symbolic implications of the uprooting, cutting down and subsequent transport of these tree species to the city and the importance of these actions not only for Gilgameš but also for his urban community. The sovereign's action on the tree, similar to that of a farmer or gardener, with the consequent creation of 'artefacts', allows, through the cultural organisation of the tree's power, the renewal of the relationship, always subject to crisis, between the human community and the divine world.

A distanza di oltre un ventennio dalla scomparsa di Giuseppe Martorana (1939-2005) alcune delle tematiche centrali del suo insegnamento storico-religioso appaiono quanto mai attuali se rapportate alla vitalità con la quale Sante e Madonne siciliane sono tutt’oggi celebrate in numerose località dell’Isola. Lo studio delle figure femminili del pantheon della Sicilia antica e cristiana è stato infatti oggetto di importanti indagini da parte di Martorana da Il Riso di Demetra. Dee eroi e santi di Sicilia (1985) a Madonne e Sante di Sicilia (1995), quest’ultimo dedicato in particolare ai culti mariani dei paesi della provincia di Palermo con l’esplicita intenzione di sottolineare i peculiari rapporti tra territori e epifanie del sacro femminile e di evidenziare come talune pratiche e credenze relative al culto delle Madonne e Sante cristiane potessero essere utilmente ricondotte e interpretate alla luce dei culti femminili della Sicilia greca e pre-greca. Ed è a partire da queste considerazioni che prende le mosse questo contributo di ricerca sulle feste dedicate alle Madonne e alle Sante della città di Palermo teso da un lato a verificare quanto la prospettiva continuista possa essere produttiva rispetto alla comprensione delle feste urbane dall’altro a illustrare la consistenza e i peculiari caratteri delle feste cittadine contemporanee. More than twenty years after the death of Giuseppe Martorana (1939-2005) some of the central themes of his historical-religious teaching they appear very current if compared to the vitality with which Sante and Sicilian Madonnas are still celebrated today in many places on the island. The study of the female figures of the pantheon of ancient and Christian Sicily is in fact it has been the subject of important investigations by Martorana from Il Riso di Demeter. Heroes and saints of Sicily (1985) to Madonnas and Saints of Sicily (1995), the latter dedicated in particular to the Marian cults of the towns of the province of Palermo with the explicit intention of emphasizing the peculiar relationships between territories and epiphanies of the sacred feminine and to highlight as certain practices and beliefs relating to the cult of Christian Madonnas and Saints could be usefully traced and interpreted in the light of the female cults of Sicily Greek and pre-Greek. And it is from these considerations that it starts this research contribution on the feasts dedicated to the Madonnas and Saints of the city of Palermo aimed on the one hand to verify how much the continuist perspective can be productive with respect to understanding urban festivals on the other hand to illustrate the consistency and the peculiar characteristics of the city festivals contemporary.

Dialogo tra antropologia religiosa e studi sul Vicino Oriente antico

Analisi antropologica del componimento mitologico sumerico Gilgamesh, Enkidu e gli Inferi

Il contributo esplora le geografie immaginarie connesse al riconoscimento UNESCO di Palermo arabo-normanna con l’obiettivo di svelare la centralità degli agrumi nella visione contemporanea della città. Le dinamiche di costruzione e le soggettività coinvolte nel progetto di ri-figurazione del luogo sono restituite attraverso l’analisi delle politiche urbane e dei discorsi veicolati dalla documentazione relativa alla candidatura del sito. Le radici rintracciate nella rappresentazione di una città prospera e lussureggiante, caratterizzata dall’abbondanza di acqua e dai suoi giardini ricolmi di frutti, sono esaminate per far emergere l’emblematico valore attribuito agli agrumi nell’immaginario arabo-normanno. Lo studio del processo di definizione dell’immagine urbana è condotto mediante l’analisi delle azioni che lo caratterizzano: la delimitazione spaziale e l’individuazione delle origini in un tempo mitico. Entrambe le operazioni si spazializzano mediante la creazione di un centro, che si riduce, nell’immagine mitica della città in un simbolo, l’albero di agrumi, elemento dominante del paesaggio agrario e sociale della Conca d’oro. Le radici di Palermo affondate nell’epoca arabo-normanna si abbarbicano nel terreno estromettendo tutto ciò che è fluido e transitorio, tutto ciò che non è integro e autentico e generano conflittualità. Le questioni sottese ai luoghi contestati sono pertanto indagate attraverso l’analisi di due casi di studio particolarmente significativi in riferimento al ruolo degli agrumi nell’immaginario contemporaneo connesso alla città di Palermo. I processi messi in luce attestano la compresenza di diversi punti di vista sull’uso del passato per definire il futuro dei luoghi. Dal modo in cui le figurazioni oggetto delle contestazioni si adattano all’immaginazione geografica di chi può dare un nome a questi luoghi e metterli sulla mappa della città, dipende il valore attribuito oggi agli agrumi e l’immagine di una città radicata nel mito di una ghirlanda paradisiaca, dove fioriscono i limoni e rifulgono le arance. The contribution explores the imaginative geographies related to the inclusion of the Arab-Norman site of Palermo in the World Heritage List UNESCO, with the aim of revealing the centrality of citrus fruits in the contemporary vision of the city. The construction and the subjectivities involved in the project of re-figuration of the place are deepened through the analysis of urban policies and discourses conveyed by the documentation relating to the candidacy of the site. The roots traced in the representation of a prosperous city, characterized by the abundance of water and its gardens full of fruits, are examined to bring out the emblematic value attributed to citrus fruits in the Arab-Norman imaginary. The process of definition of the urban image is explored through the analysis of the actions that characterize it: the spatial delimitation and the identification of the origins in a time long gone. Both operations are spatialized through the creation of a centre, which is reduced, in the mythical image of the city in a symbol, the citrus tree, which is the dominant element of the agrarian and social landscape of the 'Conca d'oro'. The roots of Palermo, sunk in the Arab-Norman era, cling to the ground, ousting everything fluid and transitory, everything that is not whole and authentic and generating conflict. The issues underlying the contested places are therefore investigated through the analysis of two particularly significant case studies concerning the role of citrus fruits in the contemporary imagination connected to the city of Palermo. The processes attest to the coexistence of different points of view on the use of the past aimed to define the future of places. Imaginative geographies produced by actors that can give a name to these places and put them on the map of the city, affect the value attributed today to citrus fruits and the image of a city rooted in the myth of a paradisiacal garland, where lemons bloom and oranges shine.

The topic of the paper is Bībī Šahrbānū’s Shia shrine near Ray (Iran) which shows a continuity of places of worship and ritual practices from the pre-Islamic period to the Islamic one. It was a place of worship dedicated originally to Anāhīd, the Zoroastrian goddess of water and fertility, protector of the royalty of the ancient Persian empires. The symbolic connector element is the water, sacred to the goddess Anāhīd, and important in the Shia worship of Bībī Šahrbānū, but also in the Zoroastrian sanctuaries near Yazd, such as that of Bānū-Pārs and Pīr-e Sabz.

For Greek lexicographers, the verb 'maschalisthenai', which appears only in Aeschylus and Sophocles, refers to certain details of the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra.The ancient tradition on "maschalismos" has become in the modern age a bone of contention among scholars around the study of Greek religion, in particular concerning the relationship with death and the underworld. This contribution examines the different interpretations of "maschalismos" proposed by Erwin Rohde and Raffaele Pettazzoni and their different perspectives on the comparison.

Poetry and anthropology: what do they have to do with each other? More and more often this pairing is invoked in the cultural chronicles, and even more often it is practised in the their actual performance: by poets less so, probably, but certainly by anthropologists, ethnologists, ethnographers or whatever you want to call them. Not without irritation in the academic establishment, always ready to defend traditional disciplinary fences, it happens - with an insistence that has become a trend - that much anthropological research acquires a tone and language, and therefore evidently contents, that overflow into the poetic, or that at least recall passages, styles and sensations that poetry has sometimes produced in the course of its long history.

Una introduzione alla sezione "Cultural Studies" del volume

This essay looks at how garden grottos a in Europe have been defined and classified through the centuries to understand how they reveal the changing relationship between man and “other”. Made from ephemeral material and subject to high levels of humidity, grottos are particularly vulnerable cultural artefacts. Despite having a rich history of ornamental grottos, up until now little attention has been paid to the grottos of Sicily. Thus, an initial list of eight specifically Sicilian grotto types is offered, in the hopes of inspiring interest in their history and conservation.

Il contributo indaga il rapporto tra città sumeriche e divinità poliadi nella Mesopotamia del III millennio a.C.

Despite the devastation produced by centuries of European colonization, Amerindian societies have maintained worldviews and conceptions of humanity which present a great richness, originality and variety. As shown both by Lévi-Strauss (1992) and, in a study perspective closer to Eliade's approach, by Sullivan (1988), they share some common characteristics which it is useful to compare, by difference and analogy, with those of Euro-Western cosmologies. As Viveiros de Castro argued with specific reference to the indigenous cosmologies of the Amazon, the importance of the aspects of relationality of reality, its eminently transformative dynamic nature, the ontological multiplicity of its components, the importance of the perspective of observation and of the situation of interaction for the determination of the reality of what "is seen", the joint consideration of 'society' and 'nature' in terms of an inseparable intertwining of relational networks, are in fact characteristic features of what he proposed to call "perspectivism Amerindian ". To these features must be added what the Brazilian anthropologist calls, giving the adjective a different meaning from the more common one, the "anthropomorphic" but not "anthropocentric" character of the ontologies widespread in the indigenous Amazon. Contrary to the tendency, prevailing with the development of modern sciences, to contrast 'cosmology' and 'anthropology', Amazonian indigenous "socio-cosmologies" offer an example of how humanity and the world they can be thought along lines of interdependence. In this paper, I provide an overview of recent debates on these issues, particularly focusing on the case of the ethnographical studies on Makuna people.