Archeologia

Il “Filotteteproject” è un progetto di ricognizione archeologica localizzato nel territorio della Crotoniatide e curato dalla cattedra di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte Greca e Romana dell'Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, sotto la direzione scientifica del prof. Eugenio La Rocca.
Il progetto si è articolato in un periodo di tre anni in cui sono state coperte zone di territorio della provincia di Crotone, individuate sulla base di studi storici (letteratura storica) e geografici (cartografia, aerofotogrammetria, ecc.) e interessate, per la prima volta, da un'attività di ricognizione di superficie sistematica – svolta con l'ausilio di strumenti e metodologie che mettano in stretta correlazione i ritrovamenti e gli aspetti storici del territorio – e mirata ad individuare e vagliare in modo scientifico la consistenza del patrimonio archeologico del territorio.
Le operazioni di ricognizione sono state caratterizzate dall'utilizzo del rilevamento satellitare (tramite strumentazione GPS) per registrare i ritrovamenti e censire le zone coperte, in modo da integrare i precedenti studi basati unicamente sull'analisi delle fonti storiche.
I dati raccolti sui reperti ceramici sono stati impiegati per costituire una banca dati essenziale nei confronti stilistici e per la produzione di strumenti di studio derivati come i quadri di fase cronologici dei manufatti. Tutti i dati risultanti dall'attività sul campo e molti altri provenienti da svariate fonti (cartografie, aerofotogrammetrie, foto satellitari, database tematici, ecc.) inerenti il territorio e la sua evoluzione storica, sono confluiti in un apposito sistema di ordinamento, catalogazione e rappresentazione (GIS). 
Questo sistema, espandibile in modo illimitato, poiché integrabile con altri studi basati sullo stesso principio della catalogazione “georiferita” dei ritrovamenti archeologici, rappresenta lo strumento ideale per esaminare vaste zone di territorio in modo puntuale pur mantenendo la possibilità di una visione d'insieme dei vari tematismi rappresentabili, siano essi legati all'archeologia, alle caratteristiche geomorfologiche del territorio o all'antropizzazione dell'ambiente.

In the field of Cultural Heritage, 3D technologies were often employed for preservation, fruition, and valorisation.
This research aims to restore the original features of burial 14 of the necropolis of Piovego using a new approach to create morphometrically accurate 3D models of the grave goods inside the structure of the burial. The necropolis of Piovego is situated in the Est of the modern city of Padua (Italy) and it was used between the end of the sixth century BC until the beginning of the fourth century BC. Burial 14 was discovered and excavated in 1976 and it was a cremation with a dolium containing all funerary objects: a set of 6 vessels of pottery and an urn that contains human remains, accessories in bronze, 1 pottery whorl, and 2 anthropomorphic figures. Furthermore, there were also a bronze needle, a bronze ring, a glass bead, and a bronze spiral located at the same quota in the dolium, very close to each other, thus indicating the probable presence of a textile covering the urn. The funeral practice of wrapping in textiles the urns as an anthropomorphic representation of the deceased, was very widespread during the Iron Age in Italy, although the survival of ancient textiles in the archaeological record is quite rare. Often the only surviving traces are mineralized fragments of fabric or traces of pattern imprinted on objects that were in contact with the fabric. Other indicators of this funerary practice are objects that can be associated with clothes, such as fibulae, pins or decorative elements such as beads or studs.
Using a new 3D integrated approach, it was possible to simulate the “dressing” of the urn and reconstruct its original aspect within burial 14. The pottery vessels and the textiles were 3D modelled, while the metal and glass objects and the figures have been acquired by a structured-light 3D scanner.
The results of this research permitted to the creation of an appearance of the burial physically visible and tangible in a three-dimensional environment, overcoming the limits of the archaeological records. This reconstruction proved to be useful not only in the interpretation of the burial but also as a potential media for future museum exhibitions of these grave goods, being an ideal integration to the museum storytelling and also providing a new and captivating way to understand the cultural heritage.

ABSTRACT – New archaeological investigations in the Late Bronze Age settlement of Monte
Croce Guardia (Arcevia – AN): Seasons 2015-2016 – The Monte Croce Guardia settlement (Arcevia, AN) is one of the most remarkable Late Bronze Age Italian sites. Being located on the top of a mountain (666 m ASL) it is naturally defended and overlooks a wide portion of the surrounding territory, from the Adriatic coast
to the Apennine ridge. The orographic unit of the site is composed by two hills linked by a col, Monte Guardia, the highest, and Monte della Croce.
The presence of archaeological remains is known since the end of XIX century, but only during the subsequent century systematic researches were conducted. Several excavation campaigns have been carried out by the Soprintendenza Archeologica delle Marche, from 1961 to 1995, under the direction of Delia Lollini and Mara Silvestrini. The results of these researches showed that Monte Croce Guardia site was intensively settled during the Late Bronze Age, and its extension reached at least 20 hectars. The archaeological investigations started again in 2015, after a long period of interruption, under the direction of Andrea Cardarelli (Sapienza – University of Rome), in collaboration with Marco Bettelli and Andrea Di Renzoni (CNR-ISMA). The first results of the new cycle of archaeological investigations, together with the thorough reviews of the previous ones, allow to better understand the complex architecture of inhabitations and other structures, together with the reconstruction of large portions of the settlement organization. In trenches 1 and 2 several rectangular huts with a gable roof have been found, and a large circular pit; the archaeological materials suggest a date in earliest phases of the Final Bronze Age, even if few pots can be dated in late phases of the same period. In trench 4 a sequence of three different huts were excavated: the earliest ones are similar in shape and dimensions to the structures present in trenches 1-2. The last hut is smaller and has a different architecture and orientation. In the archaeological layers belonging to this last structure a number of bronzes both undamaged and fragmentary have been
found, together with one or two stone moulds. These elements suggest the performance of smelting activities.
The presence of several small spools and loom weights, suggest also weaving activities. From a chronological point of view we have very few elements for a date of the lower hut; the second phase hut can be easily dated to early periods of Final Bronze Age; the third and last phase, represented by the smaller structure, on the basis
of bronzes and specific types of pottery can be dated to a final stage of Final Bronze Age.

In the Bronze Age (c. 2300-800 BC), European communities gave up their economic independence and became entangled in a continental trade network. In this paper, we will test the hypothesis that the adoption of a 'Pan-European' currency has favoured the development of such a network. We define a methodology to test the money-hypothesis in pre-literate economies, based on analogies with the material characters of metallic money in the Ancient Near East. The statistical properties of metals from European hoards are compared with those of balance weights, in order to test the following expectation: if they were used as money, complete objects and fragments are expected to comply with standard weight systems. The results meet the expectation, and indicate that bronze fragments possess the same statistical properties as hack-silver money in the Ancient Near East. The sample includes approximately 3000 metal objects, collected from two test-areas: Italy and Central Europe. The sample of balance weights includes all the items known to date for pre-literate Bronze Age Europe, collected within the framework of the ERC Project 'Weight and Value.'

Bronze is considered a key commodity during the European Bronze Age (BA, 2200-800BC). Recent studies have shown that, mostly during the Late Bronze Age (Late BA, 1300–800 BC), fragmented bronze objects were subjected to regulation consistent with a Pan-European weight system. This hypothesis is mostly based on statistical analyses of weights. In this article, we present the results of an experiment in which sickle replicas were broken up and the resulting fragments weighed and compared with examples attested from the BA. The purpose of the fragmentation was to obtain pieces complying with certain weight patterns similar to regularities observed in archaeological fragmented sickles and fragmented objects in general. Results of the fragmentation experiment have been compared with a statistical analysis of c. 1500 fragmented sickles from European BA hoards, concluding that archaeological and replica fragments share the same metrological characteristics. We suggest that rough weight-regulated fragmentation is possible even by persons with no metallurgical skill, and that both inaccurate and ‘unwanted’ fragments probably comprise the known archaeological examples, The article demonstrates that statistical analyses usually employed in similar research allow for detecting the existence of weight systems even in a dataset characterized by the significant presence of random values.

Cosine Quantogram Analysis (CQA) is a statistical analysis employed in archaeology for the study of numerical datasets with hypothesized quantal distribution. To verify thesignificance of the results, the analysis is often combined with the execution of Monte Carlo simulations. In this article, we present a freely downloadable Python package (CQArchaeo) that integrates CQA and Monte Carlo simulations in the same environment, making the analysis customizable in the main parameters. We provide a guide that enables the use of this tool even for researchers with limited experience in Python programming and demonstrate the applicability, functioning, and main limitations of the analysis on some archaeological datasets.

Have humans always sold and purchased things? This seemingly trivial question exposes one of the most conspicuous blind spots in our understanding of cultural evolution: the emergence of what we perceive today as ‘modern’ economic behaviour. Here we test the hypothesis that consumption patterns in prehistoric Europe (around 2300–800 bce) can be explained by standard economic theory, predicting that everyday expenses are log-normally distributed and correlated to supply, demand and income. On the basis of a large database of metal objects spanning northern and southern Europe (n = 23,711), we identify metal fragments as money, address them as proxies of consumption and observe that, starting around 1500 bce, their mass values become log-normally distributed. We simulate two alternative scenarios and show that: (1) random behaviour cannot produce the distributions observed in the archaeological data and (2) modern economic behaviour provides the best-fitting model for prehistoric consumption.

This work concerns the five Hoards of the protohistoric settlement of Frattesina di Fratta Polesine, site dated between the Recent Bronze Age 2 and the Early Iron Age - phase 1A (12th – 10th/early 9th c. BC). The Hoards, datable to the central phase of the final Bronze Age (FBA2 – ca. 11th c. BC) have been studied (and written about) from the typological,
chronological and functional point of view. In this work, the Hoards are analysed with different approaches, starting from the renewed chrono-typological analysis of the so called ‘tesoretto’, the Hoard composed of bronze, amber, glass, ivory, Ostrich eggshell and stone objects (mainly ornaments) published in 1971.
As regards the so called ‘Founder’s hoards’ (nos. 1-4) formed of ingots and different kinds of object fragments (instruments, weapons, ornaments), the metrological and weigh system aspects are investigated. After weighing each component (included the minimal fragments hitherto unpublished) we compared them with other similar Italian and European ensembles.
Finally, we propose some considerations about the function and the meaning of the Hoards on the base of the review of the materials, the rare and scarce notes on the discovery (unfortunately not in stratigraphic context) and in the light of the research carried out on this site since 2014, aimed at the structural and infrastructural features of the settlement.
On this base, and considering the comparison with hoards coming from both inside and outside the settlements, the paper addresses the issue of whether to attribute to these items a profane or ritual function, and underlines how the boundaries between the two are often blurred, as demonstrated by the analogies between the Hoards nos.1-4 of Frattesina and those from some Apennine peaks, most likely of votive nature.
Overall, we confirm what was expressed by Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri and Luciano Salzani on the Hoards 1-4, namely that they must have been connected with metallurgical workshops, and we propose a possible symbolic and/or sacred value for the ‘tesoretto’.