Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità

"Functional analyses of different kinds of materials together with studies on the use of natural resources have reached a high level of reliability in the last years. They give us information about perishable elements in non-wet environments too, for example by means of the wear traces of them on lithic and horn/bone tools and through the organic residues trapped in the vases. It seems to us that the principal aim now is the coordination of data that we can acquire from different fields of research in order to outline whole cycles of activity (pursued in discontinuous places and times too) and reconstruct complex patterns in the use of space. Just in this way we can gain a palaeoeconomic view as complete as possible (including the social organisation of work), where production and use are not separate. As regards aspects with a high symbolic content too, bearing in mind a suggestion of C. Renfrew, we think it is important both the recognition of the activities and the decoding of their symbolic meaning.
Authors deal with a discussion of these topics, also referring to a specific situation, a Bronze Age structure at Coppa Nevigata (south-eastern Italy)."