Accordia Workshop - Rethinking the Italian Neolithic
UCL – 26 May 2010, 11am-6pm
Rethinking cloth culture in the early to middle Neolithic of northern Italy.
Susanna Harris, British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow, Institute of Archaeology,
UCL
Compared to earlier and later periods, the evidence of materials used for cloth
and clothing in the early to middle Neolithic in Europe is particularly confusing. In
this, northern Italy is no exception. There seem to be a number of problems that
have led to this situation and preservation is certainly an issue. Unlike the later
Neolithic or Copper Age, there are no key sites with well preserved organic
remains to act as a focus for evaluating the otherwise fragmentary evidence. The
role of flax also appears rather unclear. Despite flax being one of the founder
domestic crops in some areas of Europe, it does not seem to have been adopted
in all regions and it is often unclear whether the plant was used for its fibre or oily
seeds. On the other hand, while it is readily accepted that early Neolithic
societies continued to exploit animals for their skins, this is rarely a focus of
research as it is in the Mesolithic or Palaeolithic. To investigate this problem,
rather than looking for the development of a single technology, I will consider the
complete cloth culture. By cloth culture, I mean the range of flexible, think
sheets of material that were used by a society to wrap, cover, cloth and contain.
This includes investigating animal skins and textiles, but also those materials that
are not usually considered in this category such as flexible basketry and sheets of
bark. By drawing on a range of evidence from northern Italy and close
geographical areas between c.5000-4500 BC, I hope to show that it is possible to
rethink the evidence for cloth culture in this period.
Imported cattle and/or knowledge? An isotope study on the origins of
the Neolithic in Sicily
Marcello A. Mannino1, Rosaria Di Salvo2, Olaf Nehlich1, Antonio Tagliacozzo3,
Marcello Piperno4, Sebastiano Tusa5,6, Michael P. Richards1,7
1
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
2
Museo Archeologico Regionale "Antonino Salinas", Palermo, Italy
3
Museo Nazionale Preistorico ed Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Roma, Italy
4
Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Archeologiche ed Antropologiche
dell’Antichità, Sezione di Paletnologia, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Roma,
Italy
5
Soprintendenza del Mare, Regione Siciliana, Palermo, Italy
6
Università degli Studi ‘Suor Orsola Benincasa’, Napoli, Italy
7
Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Studies on the spread of agro-pastoralism across the Mediterranean Basin have
focused on the mode of introduction or acquisition of the so-called Neolithic
package (pottery, cultigens, domesticates). Research on the process of
Neolithisation has more often than not concentrated on ‘traditional’ sources of
archaeological data (e.g. archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological studies), with
recent contributions from palaeogenetic analyses aimed at establishing whether
animals were domesticated locally or not. Few, if any, studies have made use of
the potential offered by isotope analyses as sources of data on animal origins and
diets, which could throw light on the introduction and initial management of
domesticates, allowing us to test the models for the spread of the Neolithic.
In this paper we present the results of AMS radiocarbon dating and stable
isotope analyses (carbon, nitrogen and sulphur) on bones of domestic animals
from early Neolithic levels at Grotta dell’Uzzo. These analyses offer new
information on the timing, origin and management of domesticates at the
inception of the Neolithic in NW Sicily. Preliminary results suggest that the
development of agro-pastoral economies in the central Mediterranean involved
the direct introduction of domestic animals and/or of knowledge regarding their
management, probably from further afield than southern Italy or Greece. These
results support the existence of contacts through long-distance seafaring, thereby
highlighting the need to rethink the mode and trajectories of the dispersal of
agro-pastoralism in Italy and in the western Mediterranean.
Grotta Scaloria: New Analysis of a Neolithic Ritual Cave
J. Robb, M.A. Tafuri, C. Knüsel, T. O'Connell, E. Souter:
This paper presents new analyses of the Neolithic Grotta Scaloria site in
Manfredonia on the Tavoliere-Gargano junction. A series of new radiocarbon
dates confirm the principal use of the site in the later 6th millennium BC(cal).
Stable isotope analysis of carbon and nitrogen reveals new insights into Neolithic
diet, and taphonomic reanalysis of the human bone shows a complex series of
burial rituals.
Once is not enough: Were there two Neolithic colonisations in SE Italy?
Keri A. Brown, Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, University of Manchester
The Tavoliere plain in Puglia, SE Italy, is well-known for its dense concentration of
Neolithic ditched settlement sites, which are dated from c.6000 -5000BC. The
appearance of a fully-formed agricultural economy, and the lack of prior
Mesolithic occupation in this region has led to the suggestion that the Neolithic
here was the result of a colonisation event. However south of the Tavoliere are a
small number of Neolithic sites with earlier radiocarbon dates. Was the
colonisation event here instead?
A recent consideration of the origins of the British Neolithic based on the
statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates has suggested that two separate
colonisation events were involved in the spread of agriculture to Britain (Collard
et al, 2009, J.Arch.Sci). Although we do not have such detailed radiocarbon
dating evidence for the Neolithic in Puglia, other forms of evidence will be
considered to see if there is any support for a similar scenario in Italy.
This is a speculative paper and which I hope will encourage discussion of
Neolithic origins in SE Italy.
Body forms. Casting the body in Neolithic Sardinia
Simona Losi, Institute of Archaeology, UCL
The human body and its multimodal representations have taken centre stage in
the exploration of the active role played by material culture in shaping personal
and group identities within present and past societies. This paper focuses on the
constructed performance of gestures, postures and body modification practices
materialised by miniaturistic ‘humans’ modelled in stone and clay, analysing how
their production and consumption may have contributed to the articulation of
social relations on the island during the IV millennium B.C.
Senses of home in the Neolithic of the Central Mediterranean
Robin Skeates, Dept of Archaeology, University of Durham
This paper begins with a rapid review of the archaeological evidence and theories
relating to the transition to agriculture in general, and to the creation of ‘homes’
in particular, in the Central Mediterranean, emphasizing the ethnographic
diversity of homes across this region in the Mesolithic and Earlier Neolithic. It
then turns to a detailed consideration of the colonization of the Maltese islands,
undertaken by small groups of pioneer farmers from Sicily after around 5200 BC,
including their establishment of dwelling places and an associated expatriate
sense of home.
Pottery fragmentation at Fimon Molino-Casarotto (Vicenza): work in
progress
Martina Dalla Riva, Institute of Archaeoloogy and Antiquity, University of
Birmingham
Aim of the preliminary work presented here is to try to make sense of the data
resulted from refitting and spatial patterning analyses of ceramic fragments
recovered at the Middle Neolithic lake-side settlement of Fimon-Molino Casarotto
(Vicenza) (Square Mouth Pottery Culture, phase 1).
In the last decade, archaeological studies on artefacts fragmentation (starting
from the work of Chapman 2000), with the significant contribution of extant
ethnoarchaeological research (e.g. Hodder 1982, Kramer 1985; David and
Kramer 2001), have sought to explain the phenomenon of fragmentation by
moving beyond arguments concerned with taphonomic processes and the
generalized view of past remains as rubbish. At the same time, when it comes to
pottery sherds, there are still methodological and theoretical issues that need to
be explored further.
Fimon Molino-Casarotto represents therefore a case-study on which hypothesis
can be tested in order to try to understand the diverse life-histories ceramic
vessels might undergo at a Middle Neolithic settlement site.
Rethinking the beginnings of metallurgy in the central Mediterranean
region
Andrea Dolfini, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University
The beginnings of metallurgy in the central Mediterranean region have long been
debated by archaeologists. Once believed to be late and derivative, central
Mediterranean metalworking is now firmly set in its late Neolithic and Chalcolithic
context. However, the exact chronology and directionality of its spread into and
within this region are still poorly understood. Claims for metalwork being used in
northern Italy as early as the middle Neolithic have been made, but the evidence
to support them is ambiguous. Likewise, contrasting proposals have been put
forward claiming that metallurgical knowledge would have come into Italy from
the north-eastern Alps, the eastern Adriatic, the western Mediterranean, or a
combination of these routes. Yet none of these areas show indisputable
chronological priority over the others. This paper re-examines the beginnings of
metallurgy in the central Mediterranean in the light of recent dating and research.
New interpretations will be also proposed concerning the transfer and social
understanding of metal technology in the period of time from the mid-fifth to
mid-third millennia cal. BC.
Impact, language communities and archaeological schools: British
archaeologists and Italian Neolithic studies
Mark Pearce, University of Nottingham
In this paper I shall examine the impact that British scholars have had in the
Italian scientific arena using very simple metrics – reference lists of synthetic
works on the Italian Neolthic. I shall use three recent publications, Alessando
Guidi & Marcello Piperno’s (1992) Italia preistorica, Daniela Cocchi Genick’s
(1993) Manuale di Preistoria. II. Neolitico, and Andrea Pessina and Vincenzo
Tiné’s 2008 textbook, Archeologia del Neolitico: L’Italia tra VI e IV millennio a.C..
I shall discuss the conditions for successful communication (or for the lack of
communication) between national ‘scientific communities’ (sensu Kuhn) of
archaeologists studying the Mediterranean world. As well as issues such as
language or intellectual arenas (for example in Britain we publish in journals, in
other countries conferences may be more important for interchange), I shall
highlight the important point made by idealist philosophers such as Croce and
Collingwood that scholars tend to ask questions (and therefore will be willing to
accept answers) whose resolution is relevant to their own cultural and historical
setting.
Capo Alfiere, Crotone -- in memoriam Jon Morter
John Robb, Dept of Archaeology, University of Cambridge