L’invenzione della colmata persiana. Ripensare la cesura delle Guerre persiane tra storia, memoria e archeologia.

This essay examines and deconstructs the conventional narrative surrounding the so- called Persian Fill, or Perserschutt, the purported single deposit of materials resulting from the two Persian destructions of the Acropolis of Athens in 480 and 479 BC, which has therefore been regarded as a fundamental chronological dividing line in Greek art between the Late Archaic period and the Early Classical period. After a critical review of the Acropolis excavations and of the architectural and sculptural materials unearthed beginning in the 1830s, the main interpretative proposals that have been put forward are presented: from that of Dörpfeld, the "father of the vulgata of the Perserschutt" at the beginning of the 20th century, to the more recent reinterpretations, from the 1980s onward, which have carefully distinguished the fills on the western side of the plateau (including the famous deposit of the korai) from those on the southern and southeastern sides, effectively emptying the very concept of the Perserschutt, at least for the latter. In this vein, in light of modern hermeneutic paradigms and considerations from the history of memory, the chronological significance of the Persian sack of Athens itself is critically examined: rather than viewing it as a sharp rupture, it is proposed that it be understood historically as a crucial turning point between a before and an after, between the old and the new, within a complex and diffuse relationship between destruction and reconstruction, continuity and discontinuity, and past and present.