A NEW RADIOCARBON-BASED SEQUENCE FOR EARLY ITALIAN METALWORK
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 13/03/2021

Until recently, the appearance of a mature copper-based technology in Italy was understood as a 3rd millennium BC phenomenon, whose impact on the development of European metallurgy seemed relatively marginal. The recent application of radiocarbon dating to short-lived samples from Copper Age sites, many of which include metalwork, has changed this picture dramatically, by showing a precocious surge of polymetallic technology (including copper alloys, silver and antimony) in the mid-4th millennium BC, with remarkable antecedents in the late 5th and early 4th millennia BC. A research project conducted at Newcastle University (UK) in the years 2015-2017 has critically reassessed the evidence and built a new, comprehensive sequence of Italian copper-alloy axes, daggers and halberds from late 5th to late 3rd millennia BC. This task has been accomplished using different strands of analysis, including: (a) new 14C determinations from human bone samples associated with metal objects; (b) a new classification of artefacts which incorporates analytical information (wear analyses) and seriation of contexts comprising them; (c) typological comparisons with metalwork from other regions of Europe. The combined work resulted in a novel sequence of five metallurgical horizons (modelled using Bayesian statistics) spanning over two-thousand years, which sheds new light on the tempo and social dynamics of metallurgical development in prehistoric Italy vis-à-vis central Europe and the Mediterranean.


Author(s): Iaia, Cristiano - Dolfini, Andrea (Newcastle University)