Prehistoric Obsidian Use in Southern Italy: Primary Acquisition and Down-the-line Exchange in Calabria, Basilicata, and Campania

Summary

Obsidian was a significant component of daily life in southern Italy during the Neolithic period (ca. 6000-3000 BC). Intensive surveys by Ammerman and colleagues in the 1970s identified a widespread presence of Neolithic obsidian in Calabria, generally thought to have come from the island of Lipari, mostly on the basis of its being the closest, along with general visual characteristics. While it was also thought possible to have small amounts of obsidian from the further away tiny island of Palmarola, only Lipari obsidian was present in the ~50 artifacts chemically analyzed.

Since then, extensive geological study of Lipari and the other Mediterranean obsidian sources has been conducted, while in the last ten years thousands of obsidian artifacts have been tested using non-destructive, portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometers. Specifically, about 2400 obsidian artifacts from the regions of Calabria, Basilicata, and Campania were analyzed from 2014-2017. The results fully support Lipari as the major resource, but obsidian from Palmarola, Pantelleria, and from multiple Sardinia subsources have also been identified in the region. The location and type of archaeological artifacts has been incorporated into our interpretation of the social dynamics of production and exchange during the Italian Neolithic revealing a vibrant exchange network.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21465