Across the Strait. New evidence on cultural interconnections and exchanges between Calabria and Sicily during the early Bronze Age

Abstract

Recent developments in the archaeological research carried out in Calabria in the last decades have considerably extended our knowledge about the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2200–1700 BCE). The scenario has been expanded and its knowledge deepened thanks to a series of territorial surveys carried out in the Region, especially important in the definition of local settlement dynamics. New data about the aspects/characters of intra-site inhabited areas have been provided by recent stratigraphic excavations conducted in the southern area of Calabria, which revealed also a variety of functional structures. This has allowed to deepen the chrono-typological classification and absolute dating through 14C analysis (left in background in this contribution); above all, this has allowed to study the modes of interaction and assimilation within the zones encircling the lower Tyrrhenian area (Aeolian Islands, Strait of Sicily). In addition, recent archaeometric analyses make it possible to better outline the complex relationships of contact and exchange inside this area during the Early Bronze Age, already generically assumed by the chrono-typological study of ceramics. These analyses have been realized in some Calabrian, Aeolian and Sicilian contexts, on different classes of materials and at different levels of depth. Another element, which is contributing to the construction of a renewed framework, lies in the increasing evidence of the funerary ritual of inurned cremation, whose development and diffusion in the Mediterranean area find comparisons in the important contemporary contexts of Diana in Lipari (Aeolian Islands) and Tarxien Cemetery in Malta.