Frattesina

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Frattesina is an archaeological site in the area of ​​the same name in the northern Italian municipality of Fratta Polesine . The late Bronze Age settlement was an important handicraft and trading center and the first center for European glass production west of the Aegean .

Research history

The Frattesina settlement was discovered by the Centro Polesano di Studi Storici Archeologici ed Etnografici di Rovigo (CPSSAE) in 1967 and researched since 1968. The discovery of high-quality products such as ivory combs , glass beads , robe brooches and discs made from ostrich eggshells gave an idea of ​​the importance of the site. CPSSAE organized conferences and reported on the findings in its journal. Eleven extensive excavations took place between 1974 and 1989 under the direction of Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri . The Fondo Zanotto necropolis was discovered in 1977 while deep plowing and regular archaeological excavations took place here from 1979. The first burial ground of the Narde necropolis (Narde I) was found in 1985 while water pipes were being laid. From 1987 onwards, archaeological excavations were carried out regularly. In autumn 2004, the Narde II burial ground belonging to the same necropolis was found while a drainage channel was being built . An excavation campaign was then started that lasted until April 2005. In 2013–2017, core drilling was used to research the stratigraphic conditions, and a system of former moats was discovered.

The history and finds of Frattesina are presented in the museums Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Fratta Polesine , the Museo archeologico nazionale di Adria and the Museo dei grandi fiumi in Rovigo .

description

The former settlement of Frattesina was in the Polesine on the south bank of an arm of the Po . This arm, known as the Po di Adria , ran more northerly than it does today and flows into the sea 30–40 kilometers from the settlement. The settlement was about 20 hectares in size. The two necropolises Narde and Fondo Zanotto belong to the settlement , in which about 1000 burials have been found. Most burials took place as cremations in biconical urns , which were covered with upturned deck bowls.

In the place of the former settlement there is now arable land , the center of the residential area of ​​the modern village of Fratta Polesine is a little further to the northwest.

settlement

The settlement was built on an approximately 1,000 x 200 meters large terrace alluvial origin. The central core with residential buildings and workshops covered around 10 hectares. Around this core was an area for cattle enclosures and other agricultural areas. A central moat ran through the residential area, and the settlement was divided into blocks by further trenches running across and parallel to each other. The function of these trenches is still unclear, possibly they were used to facilitate manual activities or for sewage disposal.

Necropolis Nard

The Narde necropolis (also: Le Narde ) is located on the other bank of the then Po di Adria at a distance of around 700 meters from the residential area. Their two burial fields, Narde I and Narde II , have been intensively researched; the objects found were dated from 1150 to 925 BC. Dated. Around 630 urn burials and 3 burials in the ground were found in Nard I. Four burial layers were identified, five in the central area, where a high concentration of graves can be found. This created a burial mound of 30 meters in length, which has been preserved today with a height of a little more than one meter. Some graves were marked with a large stone. In some pits for the urns, or in the urns themselves, objects of the deceased were found. Ritually broken swords ( Allerona type ) were found in two graves in Nard I. Since it was otherwise absolutely uncommon in northern Italy to add swords to the burial in the late Bronze Age, the deceased are likely to have been people of high rank. Of the nine equipped with the richest grave goods female graves in the necropolis nard are eight in nard I . In the cemetery nard II more than 200 urn burials and 22 burials were found. A cremation site ( Ustrina ) was also identified here through a layer of ash and charcoal .

An osteological analysis of 472 graves in Narde shows a sex ratio of the buried of approximately 1: 1. The proportion of buried children and adolescents in Narde II is 31%, slightly higher than in Narde I (21%). Means strontium isotopic analysis at 46 deceased could be shown that about one-third (37%) was born within 20 to 50 kilometers around the settlement of them.

Fondo Zanotto necropolis

The Fondo Zanotto necropolis is about 500 meters southeast of the settlement. About 150 burials were found here, almost all of which were cremations. Grave sites were identified in several layers and in groups. The groupings may represent relationships between the dead. Simple jewelry was found as grave goods, which was apparently worn by the dead when they were cremated and therefore deformed by the fire. A few graves contained more valuable gifts with bronze elements or jewelry made of valuable materials. On the neck of many urns there were richly incorporated decorations, an element that is missing in the urns of the Narde necropolis .

Grave goods were found in about half of the graves of both necropolises. Most of these were bronze jewelry or clothing accessories made of bronze (78%), less often tools (12%), toiletries (7%) and occasionally weapons. The remains of several people were buried in about every tenth urn. The burials contained hardly any grave goods.

History and economic importance

Southern Italy had been entertaining since the 17th century BC. Chr. Intensive trade relations with the Aegean. In the 13th century BC BC merchants from the Aegean and the Levant also reached northern Italy. Trade routes also arrived here from the north, for example for copper from Trentino or for amber from the Baltic States - a branch of the amber route led roughly along the Adige . The Po di Adria as a link between these trade routes with the Mediterranean was of strategic importance.

The Mediterranean traders brought new goods to the region, such as faience and glass beads . In addition, there was a transfer of knowledge for new techniques for ceramic production and glass processing. The weight system based on Aegean units may also have been adopted, so one found corresponding stone weights, which also came from here to the region of today's Switzerland.

In the 12th century BC There were major upheavals in many countries in the Mediterranean region, including the Po Valley . The settlements of the Terramare culture south of the Po probably got into a crisis due to drastic deforestation and intensive exploitation of the soil together with climatic warming and the sinking of the water table, which practically depopulated the area within a few decades. The areas north of the Po, whose residents now became the main contact in the developing long-distance trade, were far less affected.

At the beginning of the 12th century BC The settlement of Frattesina was founded on the banks of the Po, and a few kilometers further east Campestrin , which was to become an important center for amber processing for a short time. While Frattesina carried on the legacy of the productive traditions of the Terramare culture, the flourishing of the settlement coincided with the development of the so-called Proto- Villanova culture (or Ascona-Milazzo phenomenon ). After the founding phase, highly specialized handicrafts developed in the place, the products of which were traded in large parts of Italy, Central and Northern Europe, and partly in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The most important farm animal in the village was the pig , but game also played an important role. Deer horn was an important material for the craftsmen , as numerous workpieces and artifacts show. Another handicraft that was carried out in Frattesina was metalworking. There were four depots of metal objects from the 11th century BC. BC, which were apparently intended for melting down and recycling. In addition, raw materials from Africa such as ivory and ostrich eggs were processed in Frattesina. In the production of ceramics , a high standard was achieved, cutlery was approximately found with a wall thickness of only 2 millimeters.

A local product that was traded intensively supraregional was glass beads : Frattesina was the first center of glass production west of the Aegean. Red and blue pearls were produced from sand washed up by the river, some of which were decorated with eyes or spirals made of white glass ( pile-dwelling pearls ). Colorless, green, turquoise and brown glass were also produced. Was found semi-finished and - unique for prehistoric archaeological sites in Europe - a complete melting pot with glass residues.

According to Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, Frattesina must have been in the 11th century BC. Was the most important trading center of the northern Adriatic. It therefore assumes that politically there must have been a strong hierarchical order that controlled the acquisition and redistribution of the goods produced and traded. She believes it is possible that rulers were buried in the graves with the swords that were added.

While Frattesina was the dominant regional center in the late Bronze Age, it took over at the beginning of the Iron Age in the 10th and 9th. Century BC The 65 hectare settlement of Villamarzana, four kilometers away, took over the dominance. In Frattesina, the water channels silted up due to a flood, and a decreasing amount of finds from that period suggests a decline in production and a decrease in trade relations with the eastern Mediterranean. The last archaeological traces in Frattesina, but also in Villamarzana, date from the 9th century BC. An increasing instability of the Po di Adria with numerous floods and finally relocation of the river bed is responsible for the population decline in the area . The Po di Spina arm of the river has now become a new, economically important traffic route .

literature

  • Claudio Cavazzuti, Andrea Cardarelli, Francesco Quondam, Luciano Salzani, Marco Ferrante, Stefano Nisi, Andrew R. Millard, Robin Skeates: Mobile elites at Frattesina: flows of people in a Late Bronze Age 'port of trade' in northern Italy . In: Antiquity . Volume 93, Issue 369. Cambridge University Press, June 2019, pp. 624–644 , doi : 10.15184 / aqy.2019.59 .
  • Michele Baldo, Paolo Bellintani, Andrea Cardarelli, Massimo Saracino, Claudio Balista, Claudio Cavazzuti, Federica Gonzato, Raffaele Peretto, Francesco Quondam, Luciano Salzani, Ursula Thun Hohenstein, Maria Cristina Vallicelli: Frattesina di Fratta Polesine. Traffici e mercanti nell'Alto Adriatico . In: Archeologia Viva . 188 March / April 2018, 2018, ISSN  0392-9485 , p. 22–38 ( article online at researchgate.net).
  • Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Fratta Polesine (ed.): Il villaggio di Frattesina e le sue necropoli . 2010 ( online on the website of the municipality of Fratta Polesine (PDF; 1.97 MB)).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ National Archaeological Museum - Fratta Polesine. In: archeoveneto.it. 2010, accessed June 29, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Petra Amann : The 'Protovillanova' phenomenon in Late Bronze Age Italy and its relevance for the development of the Early Iron Age cultural groups on the Italian peninsula . In: Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum Linz (Ed.): Interpreted Iron Times. Case studies, methods, theory. Conference contributions to the 1st Linz Discussions on Interpretative Iron Age Archeology . Linz 2005, p. 18th f . ( Article online on the website of the Upper Austrian State Museum (PDF; 805 kB)).
  3. ^ A b Julian Henderson : Ancient Glass: An Interdisciplinary Exploration . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 2013, ISBN 978-1-139-61937-0 , pp. 152 ff . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).

Coordinates: 45 ° 1 ′ 30.4 ″  N , 11 ° 39 ′ 9.5 ″  E