From the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in Central Italy

Settlement, Burial, and Social Change at the Dawn of Metal Production

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12410574
AutoresAndrea Dolfini (0000-0002-9199-093X, Newcastle University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen28
Número4
Páginas503-556
Fecha de publicación2019-12-20
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Archaeological Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1059-0161 • E-ISSN: 1573-7756
EditorialSpringer Nature (PUBLISHER • SG)
DOI10.1007/s10814-019-09141-w
OpenAlexW2996056621
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas22
Referencias citadas95

The Late Neolithic and Copper Age were a time of change in most of Europe. Technological innovations including animal traction, the wheel, and plow agriculture transformed the prehistoric economy. The discovery of copper metallurgy expanded the spectrum of socially significant materials and realigned exchange networks away from Neolithic “greenstone,” obsidian, and Spondylus shells. New funerary practices also emerged, signifying the growing importance of lineage ancestors, as well as new ideas of personal identity. These phenomena have long attracted researchers’ attention in continental Europe and the British Isles, but comparatively little has been done in the Italian peninsula. Building on recent discoveries and interdisciplinary research on settlement patterns, the subsistence economy, the exchange of socially valuable materials, the emergence of metallurgy, funerary practices, and notions of the body, I critically appraise current models of the Neolithic-Bronze Age transition in light of the Italian regional evidence, focusing on central Italy. In contrast to prior interpretations of this period as the cradle of Bronze Age social inequality and the prestige goods economy, I argue that, at this juncture, prehistoric society reconfigured burial practices into powerful new media for cultural communication and employed new materials and objects as novel identity markers. Stratified political elites may not be among the new identities that emerged at this time in the social landscape of prehistoric Italy

Agriculture · Archaeology · Bronze Age · Chalcolithic · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Peninsula · Political science · Politics · Prehistory · Social complexity · Sociology · Subsistence agriculture · Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies · Anthropology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · History