Geomorphology and Prehistoric Settlements on a Volcanic Island: the Case of Ustica (Palermo, Italy)

This study represents the first attempt to combine the geomorphological characteristics of the island of Ustica with the human settlements that have been established during prehistory, with the purpose of reconstructing the interactions between communities and the natural environment from the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (6th - 1st millennia B.C.). Ustica is a small island in the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, visible but far (~55 km) from the northern coast of western Sicily. Its rugged volcanic nature, remodeled and enriched by the sea, offered to the first colonizers a wide repertoire of opportunities and challenges. This island can be treated as an ideal “laboratory” to understand how settlers, taking their first steps towards the foundation of organized communities, were able to seize opportunities or succumb to obstacles. The review of archaeological research until now carried out in Ustica, integrated with geomorphological data and other biogeographical indicators, offers a picture of the prehistory of Ustica in which human presence is continuous and distributed in various sites of the island characterized by different physiographic characteristics. There are phases dominated by the choice of naturally protected sites and phases in which settlements expands on open land, suitable for agricultural use. Where the archaeological evidence is scarce, the geomorphological peculiarities allow us to decipher the vocations and characters of a human settlement. The study leads to an open question: in the Middle Bronze Age, after about five thousand years of uninterrupted habitation of Ustica, which factors, geological, social, or other, induced the early communities to abandon the island, without returning there for about eight centuries, until the Hellenistic-Roman age?

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Volcanic Grinding Tools in Ustica Island (Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy): Local Production vs. Import of Morgantina-Type Millstones in the Hellenistic-Roman Period

Minerals ◽

10.3390/min10050389 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

pp. 389

Author(s):

Patrizia Santi ◽

Franco Foresta Martin ◽

Francesca Spatafora ◽

Sandro de Vita ◽

Alberto Renzulli

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Mediterranean Area ◽

Major And Trace Elements ◽

Alkaline Basalt ◽

Tyrrhenian Sea ◽

Local Production ◽

Middle Bronze Age ◽

Southern Tyrrhenian Sea ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Geochemical Analyses

This archaeometric study was focused on 28 grey to dark-grey lava artifacts found in Ustica Island (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy) and referable to different grinding tools: saddle querns, rotary Morgantina-type millstones, rotary hand-mills and one small mortar. Mineralogy, petrography and bulk rock geochemical analyses emphasized that most of the grinding artifacts belonged to the Na-Alkaline series of Ustica, mainly basalts, hawaiites and mugearites. Nevertheless, some millstone samples did not match major and trace elements of Ustica lavas, in particular, one high-TiO2 Na-Alkaline basalt from Pantelleria Island, some tholeiitic/transitional basalts from the Iblei Mountains and one Calcalkaline basaltic andesite, most likely from the Aeolian Archipelago. The Hellenistic–Roman re-colonisation of Ustica Island, after ca. one millennium of nearly complete abandonment, was testified by the import of the non-local Morgantina-type rotary millstones, very widespread in the Mediterranean area from 4th–3rd century BC. This import of millstones represented, for the Ustica inhabitants, a real breakthrough for developing a local production of grinding artifacts on the basis of the new rotary technique which was much more efficient than that of the archaic saddle querns, largely used in the Middle Bronze Age. The results are also discussed in the framework of the overall volcanic millstone trade in the Mediterranean area and the different milling technology in antiquity.

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Settlement mound Tepecik and the Karaz culture in Eastern Anatolia

Documenta Praehistorica ◽

10.4312/dp.47.15 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 47 ◽

pp. 262-285

Author(s):

Hatice Gönül Yalçin

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Near East ◽

Distribution Area ◽

Eastern Anatolia ◽

The Caucasus ◽

Architectural Features ◽

Late Chalcolithic ◽

Middle Bronze Age ◽

Prehistoric Settlements ◽

Small Finds

The longevity of the Kura-Araxes culture is an archaeological phenomenon in the Caucasus and Near East. Over the course of a millennium, this culture spread from its origins in Eastern Anatolia, the Transcaucasia and northwest Iran to Southeastern Anatolia, northern Syria, Palestine and Israel. Named after the settlement mound Karaz near Erzurum, the Karaz culture is a widely established Turkish term for the Kura-Araxes culture. In Palestine and Israel, this culture is called Khirbet-Kerak. Apart from the striking small finds and special architectural features, it has a special pottery with characteristics that remained almost uniform in its area of distribution. Situated in the Altınova plain in Eastern Anatolia, Tepecik was also home for this significant culture. Today, this settlement mound lies under the waters of the Keban Dam in Elazığ. Yet its strategic location on a tributary of the Euphrates enabled the emergence and development of various cultures. At this settlement, archaeologists documented the Karaz culture that occurred in an almost unbroken cultural sequence from the Late Chalcolithic up to the beginnings of the Middle Bronze Age. Thus, Tepecik is one of the most significant prehistoric settlements within the distribution area of the Kura-Araxes/Karaz/Khirbet Kerak culture in the Near East. This paper presents the Karaz pottery from Tepecik as well as the possible development of the Karaz culture in the course of the Early Bronze Age at this settlement. .

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Analysis by pXRF of Prehistoric Obsidian Artifacts From Several Sites on Ustica (Italy): Long-Distance Open-Water Distribution From Multiple Island Sources During the Neolithic and Bronze Ages

Open Archaeology ◽

10.1515/opar-2020-0118 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 348-392

Author(s):

Robert H. Tykot ◽

Franco Foresta Martin

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Water Distribution ◽

Open Water ◽

Small Island ◽

Central Mediterranean ◽

Long Distance ◽

X Ray ◽

Western Sicily ◽

Fluorescence Spectrometer ◽

Non Destructive

AbstractThe small island of Ustica was a regular part of the obsidian distribution network in the central Mediterranean, despite its location more than 50 km north of western Sicily. More than 1000 obsidian artifacts from several different sites, ranging in age from the Neolithic through Bronze Age, were analyzed using a non-destructive, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Obsidian from Lipari-Gabellotto dominates the assemblages at all sites tested, yet Pantelleria obsidian from both Balata dei Turchi and Lago di Venere are of notable quantities. Obsidian was not likely a major part of the material transported across open waters to this seemingly remote location, while our data support the hypothesis that some direct travel occurred from the Aeolian Islands to Ustica.

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The economic role of Sus in early human fishing communities

Pigs and Humans ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199207046.003.0017 ◽

2007 ◽

Author(s):

Marco Masseti

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Small Island ◽

Marine Resources ◽

Economic Role ◽

Human Community ◽

Gulf Of Naples ◽

Western Sicily ◽

The Baltic ◽

Mesolithic Period ◽

Early Human

Recent archaeological excavations of the cave of Cyclops, located in the southern cliffs of the islet of Youra (northern Sporades, Greece) have provided evidence of continuous human activity from the Mesolithic Period (10000–6800 BC) up to the beginning of the Final Neolithic (4600/ 4500–3300/3200 BC). The results of the investigation of its Mesolithic stratigraphy lead to the assumption that the economy of the prehistoric local human community was based predominantly upon the exploitation of marine resources (Sampson 1996a, 1996b, 1998; Powell 2003). Archaeological evidence suggests that the island fishermen also exploited mammals, as indicated by the discovery of a huge assemblage of bones of Sus scrofa, particularly numerous in the Lower Mesolithic levels, where they also displayed a larger size in comparison to those of the same species found in the Upper Mesolithic layers (Trantalidou 2003). Thus, beyond the marine resources, Sus appears to represent the wild animal most widely consumed by the local human community. The date of 7530 cal. BC–7100 cal. BC (8th millennium BC) was obtained for the oldest bones of these prehistoric ungulates, by radiocarbon analysis performed at the Beta Analytic Laboratory of Miami (USA) (Masseti 2002). In the light of archaeozoological evidence, early human societies which based their subsistence mainly on marine resources also feature a certain association with pigs, which has been registered from other prehistoric European and Mediterranean archaeological contexts. In Italian coastal areas, for example, this can be observed in the reports from the II Mesolithic phase of the cave of Uzzo, in north-western Sicily (Tagliacozzo 1993), from the Early Neolithic–Chalcolithic layers of the Grotta del Genovese on the small island of Levanzo in the Egadi archipelago (Sicily) (Graziosi 1962; Cassoli & Tagliacozzo 1982), and possibly also from the proto-Mycenaean settlement (Middle–Late Bronze Age) of the islet of Vivara, in the Phlegraean archipelago (Gulf of Naples) (Marazzi 1998, 2001; Costantini & Costantini 2001; Pepe 2001). In northern Europe, the exploitation of pig resources has been found associated with several postglacial human settlements of the Baltic area, such as the Ertebølle Mesolithic culture of western Denmark (Rowley- Conwy 1984), of southern Sweden (Rowley-Conwy 1998), and of the Jutland peninsula (Rowley-Conwy 1994).

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ROUTE DETERMINATION OF HISTORICAL ROADS BY LOCATION OF PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENTS: NORTH OF LAKE EBER

International Journal of Heritage, Art and Multimedia ◽

10.35631/ijham.413002 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (13) ◽

pp. 11-20

Author(s):

Ozdemir Kocak ◽

Omur Esen

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Iron Age ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

Ancient History ◽

The North ◽

The People ◽

The Social ◽

Middle Bronze Age ◽

Prehistoric Settlements

Prehistoric settlements are prominent among the most important representatives of the cultural heritage in Turkey. These settlements are important for understanding the social, cultural, and economic conditions of the people who had lived in the past. As a matter of fact, these ancient settlements (mounds) and their locations to each other are taken as a basis in understanding the prehistoric routes. In this study, a route is identified beginning from the settlements in the north of a lake called Eber Gölü, which is located in the western part of Turkey. In this project, the study methods of Ancient History, Archaeology and Geodesy, and Photogrammetry Engineering are used. According to that, first old settlements are identified, three-dimensional maps of these settlements are created and dating is carried on based on the ceramics (sherds) that are found on the settlements. All of this data is then overlapped. Successive settlements are observed in the east-west direction in the north of Lake Eber. These settlements reach a large mound called Üçhöyük in the westernmost part. In the east, it extends in different directions. Findings dating back to the 5th millennium BC (Chalcolithic Age) were found in these mounds. It is understood that the ceramics among these finds reflect a common tradition. This also supports the connection between these settlements. It is also possible to see some of these settlements from other settlements by the naked eye. Thus, it can be thought that the settlements in the north of the aforesaid lake have been in contact with each other since the prehistoric period. It can also be said that this relationship started in the Chalcolithic Age, continued during the Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age, Iron Age, Hellenistic Period, and Roman Period, because it is determined that the findings (especially sherds) belonging to these periods are very similar.

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