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The Copper Age jasper quarry of Valle Lagorara within the longer history of the valley (Italy)_2005
Lagorara. The valley is located in the Apennine mountains between Genoa and La Spezia (Italy). The major visible archaeological feature of the site is a large jasper quarry exploited during the Copper and Early Bronze Ages. The surfaces of the outcrop preserve two main areas where many imprints of extraction hammering are visible. More than 300 m 3 of raw material were quarried. The rock was almost exclusively processed in the valley (two workshops have been investigated) with a standardised chaîne opératoire, in order to produce bifacial specimens.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2017
The Neolithic greenstone industry of Brignano Frascata (Province of Alessandria, Piemonte Region, Northern Italy) was investigated with an archaeometric approach involving both morpho-typological and mineral-petrographic methods, in order to reconstruct the manufacturing techniques/habits and locate the supply sources of the raw materials. The outcomes were compared with those collected on similar tools from other sites of the same region, namely in the Grue, Ossona and Curone valleys, as well as others resulting from a pilot comparative study on analogous geological specimens from close Quaternary alluvial and/or Oligocene conglomeratic deposits. This survey proved that Brignano Frascata should be considered as a local atelier for the production/trade of polished stone implements in Neolithic, devoted to daily uses with no ritual purposes. Several indicators point to an in situ manufacturing (high number of retrieved roughouts/fragmented tools, broken during production/ use), which also fed trade/exchange forms on short-to-medium distances. Although displaying gross processing features and lack of finishing, these tools show an excellent selection of lithologies, marked by predominance of 'Na-pyroxene rocks'. Several mineral-petrographic resemblances are observed with analogous geological samples from local sources, as well as with coeval implements from other Northern Italy sites, suggesting a common supply source or the existence of a trade channel. By considering the mineral-chemical features of the rocks used to produce these tools, referred to the particular geologic context of discovery (eastern part of the Voltri Group), the chance for the raw materials to derive from secondary deposits of close conglomeratic formations and/or alluvial beds of streams flowing in the adjoining valleys is proposed.
Mining in European History and its Impact on Environment and Human Societies – Proceedings for the 1st Mining in European History-Conference of the SFB-HIMAT, 12.–15. November 2009, Innsbruck, 2010
This paper argues that the opening up of the Liguria uplands and their use for transhumant summer pastoralism led to the discovery of new mineral resources, copper and chert. More intensive agricultural production, based on secondary products, may have allowed the 4th millennium societies of north western Italy to move beyond a purely subsistence-based economy to one based on the exploitation of mineral resources. Thus although minerals were potentially available to the inhabitants of Neolithic Liguria, it was only in the 4th millennium cal BC that a more widespread and intensive use of the landscape led to their discovery and exploitation. The link between metallurgy and pastoralists has long been a topos of the archaeological literature, but Gordon Childe’s (1958) classic model may in fact offer an explanation for the beginnings of metal ore extraction, at least in Liguria.
Rendiconti Lincei, 2015
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Torre Crognola (Northern Latium, Italy): A Large Settlement with Bell Beaker Findings
The Bell Beaker Culture in All its Forms, 2022
During an archaeological survey carried out in the 1970s by the Gruppo Archeologico Romano (GAR) an important prehistoric settlement was discovered at the site of Torre Crognola, located in northern Latium along the Fiora river, about 3.5 km north of the Etruscan city of Vulci. The survey made it possible to collect in the ploughed fields a large amount of Late Copper Age artefacts, densely distributed over a large area, covering no less than 3 hectares (an extent that ranks in the highest range of contemporary settlements). The material culture of the site is largely attributable to the Bell Beaker culture (in a version that presents interesting comparisons with Sardinia) and the coeval cultural group of central Italy recognised as the Ortucchio facies. This latter cultural aspect can now be better studied and understood thanks to the detailed chrono-cultural sequence reconstructed through many excavations carried out in the area around Rome, recently completely published in the comprehensive work Roma prima del Mito. The abundance of Bell Beaker pottery and other artefacts of local type, its remarkable extent, and also the presence nearby of several caves and shelters with finds dated to the 4th-2nd millennia BC make the Torre Crognola site an archaeological complex of great potential for the study of the Copper Age, and in particular of the Bell Beaker phenomenon.