Petroarcheometric Analysis on Obsidian Artefacts Found Within Some Neolithic – Eneolithic Period Caves of Southern Italy

Abstract

In the last twenty years, obsidian artefacts have been found in important and often extensive karst cavities in Southern Italy: three located in Calabria (Grotta della Monaca, and Grotta del Tesauro, in Sant’Agata di Esaro, Cosenza; Grotta Pietra Sant’Angelo in San Lorenzo Bellizzi, Cosenza), one in Puglia (Grotta di Santa Barbara in Polignano a Mare, Bari) and another in Campania (Grotta di Polla, Salerno). All these sites, that have returned a total of 151 obsidian tools, were connected to human frequentation of the underground environments that occurred during the Holocene, which can be precisely located in the vast period between the Neolithic and the Eneolithic (6th–4th millennium BC). They are mainly blades and bladelets, but also burins together with scrapers and cores, generally of small dimensions. SEM-EDS and WD-XRF absolutely non-destructive analyses carried out on these items have shown that all samples have a source area in the obsidian outcrops of the island of Lipari (Messina, Italy). These data confirm that the Aeolian island of Lipari furnished the privileged obsidian extraction outcrops for most of the Neolithic and Eneolithic archaeological sites of Southern Italy.

Keywords

• obsidian provenance
• prehistoric caves
• southern italy
• sem-eds
• wd-xrf
• non-destructive analyses