Nella "fossa dei serpenti"

The pit is the interior of the Chapel of St. Paul of Galatina, where, according to de Martino, a kind of haphazard funeral of traditional Tarantism took place in 1959. The snakes are the Tarantata dances, writhing, no longer with any attachment to choreutic-musical devices, which over time had dissolved to make way for the cult of the Saint. De Martino s team was faced with various difficulties — which were only pardy foreseen — while preparing to ethnographically document the events of 28th and 29th June in the infamous chapel, and it seemed to the author that the material that had been painstakingly collected could not be woven into the fabric of the work that was being composed. In the Terra del rimorso, there is only a hint — albeit a very vivid hint — of this moment in the overall research. But now, after almost all of the unpublished materials relating to the expedition have been published by Amalia Signorelli, we can examine the choice made by de Martino from a privileged position and gain some critical insight.