Cetina Culture

Preliminary archaeological investigations between Naples and Cancello on the Naples-Bari railway track in October 2014, brought a cemetery to the light that can be dated between the Late Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age. The archeological investigations made it possible to fill an important archaeological gap in Campania as the transition from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age is difficult to document in this area. Thanks to the discovery of the necropolis of Gaudello it has been possible to identify an occupation of the territory by a cultural group that gives life to a very peculiar vascular production which can be read as a full hybridization between Laterza pottery shapes and Bell Beaker and Cetina decorations. Globular shapes are created, with a cap or with a “S”-profile with decorations similar to “dragged comb ware”. Likewise it is highlighted how the people who occupied the Acerra territory, near the Clanis river, were absorptive for external influences and participated in exchange circuits thanks to which inside the tombs halberds and pins from the Cetina aspect and Bell Beaker horizon are found. In this necropolis from the assimilation of the Bell Beaker and Cetina elements arises a real form of “hybridisation”, not enclosable in a typological facies, but which can be defined as a cultural horizon where more types of influences coming from more areas are mixed. The legacy of the previous Laterza horizon is lost, abandoning the material production that was rooted with it, showing, instead, a high degree of absorption of external influences that become an autonomous interpretation and mixture of new models from which arises a different production, related to different cultural matrices. A vast basin of syncretism is created where different elements merge, generating mixtures, interactions and associations between heterogeneous characters that are reworked and taken over by people who decided to use these traits within their own funeral areas.

https://ipotesidipreistoria.unibo.it/issue/view/877

This poster presents the first results of petrographic analyses on Cetina and Cetina-like ceramics from key sites of Dalmatia and the Peloponnese. This study aims at addressing some aspects of the so-called Cetina phenomenon that have not been investigated as yet. The Cetina culture arose in Dalmatia in the mid-3rd millennium BC. It is mainly known for its burials consisting in inhumations or incinerations under stone barrows that are often grouped together to form clusters. Distinctive Cetina ceramics are bowls with thickened rims and beakers decorated with geometric incised and impressed patterns. During the second half of the 3rd millennium BC pottery strongly characterised by Cetina features spread across the central Mediterranean and this is widely considered to be evidence of a vast network of interconnections reflecting the movement of small human groups. In particular, Cetina-like ceramics have been found at a number of Early Bronze Age sites in the Peloponnese.
However, aside from a stylistic comparison, nothing has been done to explain differences and similarities between these ceramics from a technological point of view. Given the huge differences in pottery traditions from Dalmatia and the Peloponnese in the Early Bronze Age, this matter is of particular interest.
Analysed sherds from Dalmatia come from three clusters of tumuli: Brnjica, Poljakuše (Šibenik) and Vučevica (Split), while samples from the Peloponnese come from the sites of Olympia and Andravida Lechaina (Elis), which have yielded a number of Cetina-like sherds.
These analysed sample sets have common stylistic traits, but also technological differences that sometimes can be macroscopically recognised. This variation might result from natural variability in the available raw material sources. On the other hand, it might be due to specific technological choices and traditions possibly linked to the existence of multiple communities of practice under the umbrella of the Cetina phenomenon.

Gli autori presentano i primi dati sul progetto di ricerca condotto nell'area golenale del Torrente Torre, tra i comuni di Pavia di Udine e di San Vito al Torre. La zona, caratterizzata da una forte dinamica fluviale, consente di raccogliere numerosi dati sul potenziale archeologico, in particolare preistorico e protostorico, di questo tratto della pianura udinese.

The authors present the preliminary data on the research project carried out in the alluvial plain of the Torre River, in the territory of Pavia di Udine and San Vito al Torre. The area, characterized by a strong river dynamics, allows to collect information on the archaeological potential, in particular prehistoric and protohistoric, of this part of the Udine plain.