Dynamic Social Networks Across The Landscape. A Petrological Study Of Bronze Age Ceramics In Nuragic Sardinia (Italy)

The thesis focused on the relationship between ceramic technology and social organisation and studied 488 ceramic thin sections from eight Bronze Age settlements located in two micro-regions of south-central Sardinia.

The approach proposed - analysing ceramic fabric variability among selected common nuragic vessel forms in close connection with the domestic architectures - represents an innovation with respect to the previous studies of pottery in Sardinia, that have mainly focused on stylistic attributes and their use in assessing a chronological typology.

The principal research question of this thesis was whether a technological study of a selected group of pottery coming from nuragic domestic structures, could shed new light on the pattern of pottery production, consumption and exchange at an inter-site level among the archaeological settlements considered. The petrographic analysis and laboratory tests contributed successfully to the establishment of the relevant fabric groups and classes of raw materials used by potters, their characterization, the reconstruction of certain technological and social choices, and identification of the provenance of the principal clays used. All this constitutes a firm basis for future analysis of ceramics from the two study areas and for the whole of Sardinia.

One of the most striking results achieved was the realization that nuragic plain domestic pottery, like the imported exotica coming from the Aegean, could have been circulating among nuragic settlements as exchanged items, at an inter-site and inter-regional level throughout the Bronze Age. This result was complemented by the identification, in the landscape between the Orroli plateau and the Mulargia river valleys, of several distinct pottery traditions that might reflect patterns of interaction between groups of people of different cultural affiliations.