For a reconstruction of metallurgical activities: formation processes of an experimental casting pit

Abstract

During a workshop of experimental archaeology organized by the University of Bologna in 2017, a casting pit that was used for experimental activities in 2012 has been re-excavated five years later to verify the impact of post-depositional processes and to test some useful procedures for documenting this kind of archaeological features. it has been excavated an experimental casting pit realized and used in 2012 for the production of bronze tools. One of the issues in the metallurgical technologies research of the Italian bronze age concerns the identification of areas of casting activities. The aim of this experiment is to obtain a set of information useful to outline archaeological markers which may lead to the identification of casting pits and therefore to define the best suitable digging and documentation strategies to be adopted in the field. Moreover, it is also highlighted how the combining approach of stratigraphy and experimental archaeology may provide, on the long term, relevant data to define more clearly the causal relations between human behavior (systemic context) and strata (archaeological context) and the dynamics of transformation between productive activities and postdepositional processes.