IpoTESI di Preistoria (May 2020)
Between facies and cultures: the case study of Early Bronze Age cemetery of Gaudello at Acerra (NA)
Abstract
Preliminary archaeological investigations between Naples and Cancello on the Naples-Bari railway track in October 2014, brought a necropolis to the light that can be dated between the Late Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age. The archeological investigations made it possible to fill an important archaeological gap in Campania as the transition from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age is difficult to document in this area. Thanks to the discovery of the necropolis of Gaudello it has been possible to identify an occupation of the territory by a cultural group that gives life to a very peculiar vascular production which can be read as a full hybridization between Laterza pottery shapes and Bell Beaker and Cetina decorations. Globular shapes are created, with a cap or with a “S”-profile with decorations similar to “dragged comb ware”. Likewise it is highlighted how the people who occupied the Acerra territory, near the Clanis river, were absorptive for external influences and participated in exchange circuits thanks to which inside the tombs halberds and pins from the Cetina aspect and Bell Beaker horizon are found. In this necropolis from the assimilation of the Bell Beaker and Cetina elements arises a real form of “hybridisation”, not enclosable in a typological facies, but which can be defined as a cultural horizon where more types of influences coming from more areas are mixed. The legacy of the previous Laterza horizon is lost, abandoning the material production that was rooted with it, showing, instead, a high degree of absorption of external influences that become an autonomous interpretation and mixture of new models from which arises a different production, related to different cultural matrices. A vast basin of syncretism is created where different elements merge, generating mixtures, interactions and associations between heterogeneous characters that are reworked and taken over by people who decided to use these traits within their own funeral areas.
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