Stentinello culture
The Stentinello culture is a Neolithic cultural group of the cardial or imprint culture in Sicily , Malta and in the south of Calabria (Capo Alfiere). It is named after the place where it was found in Stentinello near Syracuse .
Their distinguishing features are three-color painted, stamped and stylized ceramics similar to the Serra d'Alto style on the Aeolian Islands , with meander - spirals - and zigzag patterns , as well as graceful stone vessels made of obsidian , which comes from the Aeolian Islands . The pottery of the later Diana culture is simple and decorated in red monochrome. Agriculture, animal husbandry and fortified village settlements with oval and round huts are documented.
The early bearers of the culture settled around 6000 BC. The archipelago of Malta . In the later phase, connections with Crete are emerging. Paolo Orsi (1859–1935) researched the culture, but published the results incompletely. According to S. Tine, the spread of the Guadone style to eastern Sicily may have contributed to the emergence of the Stentinello culture. From this follows the theory of a not yet found Proto-Stentinello horizon. Today there is a village near Stentinello that imitates the painted ceramics.
The finds in the Grotta dell'Uzzo (near San Vito Lo Capo ) are of fundamental importance for understanding the Neolithic Sicily. The excavation shows a clear stratigraphy between the middle of the 9th and the beginning of the 5th millennium BC. The different levels show the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic and document the strategies of hunters and gatherers and the gradual introduction of cultivated plants as well as the first appearance of pottery in the Neolithic.
Subsistence farming was not limited to collecting seeds and wild fruits, hunting (deer, wild boar) played a role. The fishery was also based on whaling. The increase in fish fauna among animal remains in the early Neolithic period also marks the simultaneous finds in the Franchthi Cave in Greece. Arrowheads in particular are documented as cross cutters among the stone tools . The transition to the Neolithic seems to have taken place gradually. The beginning of agriculture from the late 6th and early 5th millennium BC. BC is documented by remains of Triticum dicoccum , Hordeum vulgare and Triticum aestivum .
literature
- Vincenzo Tiné: La facies a ceramica impressa dell'Italia meridionale e della Sicilia In: Maria Antonietta Fugazzola Delpino, Andrea Pessina, Vincenzo Tiné (eds.): Le ceramiche impresse nel Neolitico antico , Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Rome 2002, p 131-166.
- S. Scarcella, A. Bouauillon, A. Laclaire: Neolithic Facies of Stentinello Culture: Analysis and Comparison of Ceramics from Capo Alfiere (Calabria) and Perriere Sottano (Sicily) , in: Isabella Turbanti-Memm (Ed.): Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Archaeometry, 13th - 16th May 2008, Siena, Italy , 2011, Part 1, pp. 153–158.
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ Jon Morter: The Chora of Croton 1: The Neolithic Settlement at Capo Alfiere , PhD 1992, edited by John Robb, The University of Texas Press, Austin 2010.