Investigating the earliest Bronze Age contacts between Sicily and the Levant

A pottery fragment found in a 14th-century BCE context on the tell of Beirut belongs to a vessel of the Thapsos type imported from Sicily and represents the earliest known Bronze Age Sicilian product that reached the Levantine coast. Employing petrography and neutron activation analysis, we analyzed typological parallels for that vessel from southeastern Sicily in order to determine its exact provenance region. The wider area of Syracuse is known for its Mycenaean and Cypriot imports, while products exported from 14th-century Sicily to Greece and Cyprus have not been found thus far. The well-known Thapsos/Pertosa sword from the Uluburun wreck is the only other published object that might have been produced on Sicily and ended up in the East Mediterranean during that century. Our archaeometric results provide us with the opportunity to reassess direct and/or indirect connections between the communities living on Sicily and the entire East Mediterranean