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During the Neolithic period, near the North-Eastern coast of the Gargano promontory (Apulia Region, Italy), an important network of mines represented the most ancient European example of systematic exploitation of primary chert sources. These high-quality raw materials were traded between prehistoric communities living on both sides of the Adriatic Sea. However, the Gargano promontory is not the only area of the Apulia Region with chert sources. Secondary sources of the Tavoliere plain deposits and primary sources of the Southern Apennines must be considered in addition to the Gargano chert-bearing limestones. This paper provides an overview of chert sources distribution in the Gargano and Tavoliere plain through a chert sources map based on up-to-date geological and archaeological information. The map represents the first lithic procurement mapping in the Region and it is a very useful tool for planning sampling activities and detect the potential chert sources exploited in Neolithic times. The map was used for sampling pebbles near the coast and inland of the investigated area. A non-destructive multi-parametric protocol for chert investigations (NM-PCI) method was applied to all the collected secondary samples. The results were compared at first with those of the Gargano mines. The output of the partition around medoids (PAM) procedure shows, as a general trend, that primary sources are well grouped, while secondary sources show less clear compositional fingerprints. However, the features of the coastal and inland pebbles are quite different.

Northern Apulia has primary and secondary chert sources which were exploited in prehistory. During Neolithic period, on the north-eastern coast of the Gargano promontory, an important network of mines represented one of the most significant primary chert sources in the Adriatic area. However, easily accessible secondary chert sources are available in the Tavoliere plain in several synthems from the southern Appennines chain to the Gulf of Manfredonia. This work provides an overview of chert sources distributed in the Gargano and Tavoliere plain by means of a combination of up-to-date geological and archaeological information. Moreover, the lithic industries of eight Early and Middle Neolithic settlements were sampled in order to understand the procurement strategies of chert or tools used by communities settled in the Tavoliere plain. A non-destructive multi-parametric protocol for chert investigations (NM-PCI) method was applied to all the collected Gargano mines and secondary chert from the Tavoliere area. The results obtained demonstrate a high percentage of secondary chert used in the investigated sites, and the exploitation of mined chert essentially for the production of blades. In this latter case, provenance from the mines of Maiolica Fm is more frequent than that from mines of Peschici Fm. The polygenic nature of the pebbles occurring in the different synthems is the consequence of different sedimentary histories, as witnessed by the difference in the lithological array between inland and coastal synthems, and makes difficult any attribution to a specific source. If on the one hand these results further testify the circulation of mined Gargano chert in the Tavoliere plain in the Early Neolithic, on the other hand they demonstrate that the secondary coastal pebbles, especially those of southern Gargano lithotypes, were largely used, even in inland settlements. Moreover, these results suggest the exploitation of other primary cherts of the southern Gargano. This underlines the importance of further archaeological and geological investigations to better understand the exploitation and circulation of chert in Northern Apulia and in the Adriatic area.

A nondestructive multiparametric protocol for chert investigations (NM-PCI) was developed to provide objective criteria for raw material procurements and provenance investigations of archaeological cherts. For this purpose, macroscopic and mesoscopic characteristics (structures, textures and paleontological contents) were used to describe the main visible chert features as well as colourimetric and geochemical data acquired with portable devices. Data handling was performed by means of cluster analysis multivariate statistics, with an appropriate selection of algorithms to process and visualize mixed data matrices (partitioning around medoids (PAM), t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE)). The protocol was applied to chert samples from the Gargano Promontory (Italy, Apulia) mining complex located in the districts of Peschici, Vieste and Mattinata. These mines, exploited for approximately four millennia, constitute an exceptional prehistoric record of mining archaeology and, above all, a key tool to understand the Neolithisation process throughout the Adriatic region. A map of the primary and secondary chert sources of the Gargano Promontory was produced to manage field sampling of mine structures. Waste materials were selected for the geologic samples of the five mines. Due to their inaccessibility, the samples from two mines consisted exclusively of waste materials. The NM-PCI proved able to discriminate most of the analysed mines and is well suited to provenance investigations of archaeological lithic industries. Compared to previous geochemical studies, the nondestructive method proposed here improves geological resolution, allowing the discrimination of cherts within the same formation.

The issue of clay processing concerns both provenance and techno-functional ceramic investigations. In the former, the compositional/textural modification of clay alters the petrofacies expressed by the ceramic body and causes a change from the raw material in terms of bulk chemical and mineralogical composition and petrographical features as well. In the latter, identifying the signs of clay processing will provide information on the steps of the chaine operatoire and on the technological choices made to adjust paste plasticity and to avoid failures in the following stages of manufacture. Several examples of clay processing were considered, encompassing deliberate addition of natural and artificial temper and clay mixing, other than fractioning and homogenisation to prepare the forming stage. The expected effects of mineral, vegetal and animal tempers on the paste and on the fired body were outlined. Finally, some analytical guidelines are provided to identify clay processing, using the most common analytical methods. Optical microscopy and electron microscopy provide the main contribution to identifying most of the processing practices on the clay, whereas bulk methods provide indirect evidence that may alone be insufficient to prove the occurrence of a specific transformation, as well as to detect homogenisation features. However, only a careful and multidisciplinary investigation of the ceramic body will help reveal the actions of the chaine operatoire and to test archaeological models in a sound bottom-up perspective.

Grotta dei Cervi (Apulia, Southern Italy) is the most important European figurative art site for its Neolithic red and brown paintings found in the various galleries of the cave. It was frequented with particular intensity between an advanced phase of the Early Neolithic (first half of the sixth millennium BCE) and continued up to the end of the Bronze Age (last centuries of the second millennium BCE). Among the more than thirty thousand finds, some ceramic shards had black residues on them. These residues were sampled so that molecular and isotopic investigations could be carried out. GC–MS-MS and EA–IRMS after fractionation of the samples allowed us to identify bitumen on some archaeological potsherd remains and to identify its geographic source by comparison with geological samples from Majella and Selenice, two deposits located respectively in Italy and Albania and known to have been exploited since Neolithic times. All the bitumens from Porto Badisco correlate with each other and with the Selenice geological samples. Isotopic fingerprints strongly support the biomolecular evidence and confirm the Albanian origin of the archaeological bitumen. The data presented herein provide the first evidence of export and trade of raw bitumen across the Adriatic Sea from Selenice to Apulia during the Neolithic age thus bringing back to the fifth millennium BCE the transport of bitumen across the Adriatic Sea in the central Mediterranean area.

The paper presents archaeometric analyses (OM, XRPD and XRF) of Greek imports, Greek-type pottery, local reference materials of Orientalising Period (7th century BC) from the modern city of Policoro (Basilicata), in the area of ancient settlement of Siris/Polieion along the Ionian Sea coast. The 34 potsherds can be divided into eight different fabrics for their composition and grain-size distribution. Fabrics IC, ICP, ICC and ICA (n = 27) can be ascribed to the use of a Ca-rich clay, while fabrics QA, IGC, Q and IA (n = 7) to the use of a Ca-poor clay. Pottery made of calcareous clay can be associated with four clay samples from the local marine Plio-Pleistocene clay and fluvial deposits, with significant elutriation as inferred from its very fine texture and chemical variability. Pottery made of non-calcareous clays shows very different non-plastic inclusions (mudstones, chert and quarzarenitic as well as calcareous clasts) which suggest non-local production, with different imports from Greece, such us Corinthian amphorae, Subgeometric pottery and surprisingly also firing pots (chytrai). The Ca-poor samples show a general low to medium sintering (500

Digital image analysis has recently emerged as a powerful tool for the analysis of the ceramic thin sections. By producing quantitative data, it increases the usefulness of ceramic petrography to address archeological questions. Despite several works considering digital image analysis to study archeological ceramic materials, so far, no work has been proposed to evaluate the possibilities of optical microscopy (OM) image analysis for classification and modal analysis, knowing its advantages and drawbacks, as compared to scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image processing. In this work, we propose an algorithm to count the mineral inclusions correctly classified by OM image analysis with respect to SEM images. The proposed algorithm is based on a matching mechanism applied to the regions of interest (ROIs) detected in the OM images according to the corresponding ROIs as detected in the SEM images. Moreover, a comparison with point counting on the same OM images is also provided to evaluate the pros and cons of each method. Two Late Acacus (Mesolithic) potsherds (8900–4200 BP) are considered as case study for modal analysis to identify and classify quartz, feldspars, and carbonate aggregates as mineral inclusions.

In Upper Nubia (currently northern Sudan), the art of making pottery has a very ancient and durable tradition, dating back to the early Holocene and preceding the introduction of a food-producing economy. Ethnographic case studies have demonstrated that this tradition has been preserved in many areas of the country. This paper presents a comparative study of ancient and modern traditional ceramics from four prehistoric sites at Sai Island, in the river Nile, and a present-day workshop located in the nearby village of Abri. The aim of the study was to investigate any diachronic changes in the selection of clayey raw material and the technological processes of the manufacturing sequence. The study combined macroscopic and analytical approaches and examined a large set of ceramic and local clay samples by means of petrographic (OM), mineralogical (X-ray powder diffraction; XRPD) and chemical (X-ray fluorescence; XRF) analyses. The resulting data underline a remarkable continuity in raw material sourcing and composition, as well as in many technological processes, from the ceramic assemblages dating from Abkan cultural horizon ( c . 5500 BCE) until to the present-day production in Abri. This continuity emerged after a preceding discontinuity, indicated by a different selection of clay raw material and tempers in the oldest production dating to the Khartoum Variant horizon ( c. 7600–4800 BCE).

Ceramics are among the most studied findings, one of the best markers for providing technological and functional information in archaeological contexts. Their chemical-mineralogical characterization allows to answer a large number of historical-archaeological questions about classification, provenance, production technologies, trade routes, economic exchange, etc. The best methodological approach not only integrates morphological-stylistic studies to the archaeometric ones, but also includes a synergic instrumental strategy aimed both to take advantage of each different analytical technique to the best of its potentiality and to over step the problems connected to the preciousness and uniqueness of the objects. As far as the mineralogical and petrographical composition of preindustrial ceramics is concerned, its determination is crucial to answer provenance and technological issues like raw materials procurement and the production processes in this respect, equivalent firing temperature, redox atmosphere during firing are important factors that help in understanding the relevant mineralogical and micro-structural transformations. In this paper, we illustrate how an integrated approach of analytical techniques, tested on different classes of ceramics – pottery with spathic calcite, Apulian red figure pottery and technical ceramics – can provide answers to archaeological questions.

A multi-proxy record based on calcareous plankton, dinocysts, pollen, mineralogy and grain size has been acquired from the “Ideale” section, the portion of Montalbano Jonico succession (Southern Italy) that could host the GSSP for the Middle Pleistocene. The direct correlation between marine and terrestrial proxies provides a valuable indication of atmospheric and oceanic connections. The record shows a distinct climate variability well expressed by the vegetational changes, sediment input into the basin and sea surface–water modifications. Biotic proxies indicate that, during the study interval, periods of prevailing subpolar/transitional surface–water conditions were concurrent with steppe and halophytic vegetation. Erosional processes on the hillslopes and terrigenous supply, during these periods, were likely favored due to reduced arboreal vegetation, as attested to by sediment composition and pollen assemblages. Temperate/subtropical surface water conditions were concomitant with prevalent expansions of thermophilous arboreal plants and moister conditions on land, which likely promoted chemical weathering leading to an enhanced supply of kaolinite and smectite in the basin. A relationship between mineral content and the nature of the outcropping units in the source area, as well as sea-level fluctuations, has also been considered. A well-defined period of polar–subpolar water incursion, ranging from 793.2 ka to 788.1 ka, matches the major expansion of steppic vegetation on land and the increase of terrigenous supply into the basin. It likely represents the local response to North Atlantic ice-rafted debris deposition. Short-lived warming/cooling episodes punctuate the latest part of MIS 20 and are tentatively correlated with analogue climate phases predating MIS 1 inception. Full interglacial conditions of MIS 19c, lasting 10.6 kyr, started at 784.3 ka and were characterized by warm, oligotrophic and stratified surface–waters coupled with forest expansion, suggesting prevalent warm and humid conditions on land. A potential sapropel-like interval is identified within MIS 19c and correlated to i-cycle 74. The MIS 19c/19b transition is marked, at 773.2 ka, by the reestablishment of millennial-scale variability, similarly to North Atlantic marine and ice-core records. The results improve the paleoclimate framework of a Middle Pleistocene reference section and add further insight regarding climate development across MIS 19 and on potential similarities with its closest Holocene analogue.

Centre for Isotopic Research on Cultural and Environmental heritage (CIRCE) has, recently, obtained some promising results in testing the feasibility of mortar radiocarbon dating by means of an ad hoc developed purification procedure (CryoSoniC: Cryobraking, Sonication, Centrifugation) applied to a series of laboratory mortars. Observed results encouraged CryoSoniC accuracy evaluation on genuine mortars sampled from archeological sites of known or independently constrained age (i.e., other 14C dates on different materials). In this study, some 14C measurements performed on genuine mortars will be discussed and compared with independently estimated (i.e., radiocarbon/archaeometrical dating) absolute chronologies of two Spanish sites. Observed results confirm the agreement of the CryoSoniC mortar dates with the archaeological expectations for both examined cases. Several authors reported the possibility of obtaining accurate radiocarbon dates of mortar matrices by analyzing lime lumps: binder-related particles of different sizes exclusively composed of calcium carbonate. In this paper, preliminary data for the absolute chronology reconstruction of the Basilica of the cemetery complex of Ponte della Lama (Canosa di Puglia, Italy) based on lime lumps will also be discussed. Dating accuracy will be quantified by comparing 14C data on mortar lime lumps from a funerary inscription of known age found near the Basilica, in the same study site. For this site, a comparison between absolute chronologies performed by bulk and CryoSoniC purified lime lumps, and charcoal incased in mortars (when found) will also be discussed. Observed results for this site provide evidence of how bulk lime lump dating may introduce systematic overestimations of the analyzed sample while CryoSoniC purification allows accurate dating. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.