Comparative Chronology of Late Bronze Age Southern Greece and Southern Italy

The idea behind the project entitled "The Comparative Chronology of Late Bronze Age Southern Greece and Southern Italy" is to provide the basic framework for comparative archaeological, historical and anthropological studies. Its ambitious task is to offer the synchronisation of the Late Bronze Age phases in the Aegean (Late Helladic/Late Minoan I - Late Helladic/Late Minoan IIIC) are correlated with those of the Middle, Late and Final Bronze Age (Bronzo medio, recente and finale) in Italy, as detailed and precise as possible accroding to the state of research. Evidence for Bronze Age contacts between Greece and Italy are found mainly in the southern regions of both contries. Various classes of material can be used to correlate the Italian and Greek chronological systems, because they are common to the archaeological record of both Italy and Greece. At the beginning of the project a reassessment of the most recent typology of Mycenaean pottery in southern Italy was undertaken, in order to evaluate the chronological significance of the single archaeological finds. The course of the following stage saw the analysis of the settlement stratigraphies of Broglio di Trebisacce and Roca Vecchia in Italy and Tiryns, Lefkand and Pylos in Greece, as well as of grave finds from Pylos. The cross-dating of the various archaeological assemblages suggests that the beginning of the Final Bronze Age phases in Italy should be synchronised with later Aegean phases than previously thought. The future work of the project will focus on two issues: 1. The proposed new synchronisations will be tested with more Italian sites (Torre Mordillo, Lipari) and with more Aegean finds of common Italo-Aegean type (metal objects). 2. The earlier settlement stratigraphies of the Italian Middle Bronze Age (Lipari, Filicudi, Vivara) will be synchronised with settlements and tomb finds of the earlier and middle phases of the Aegean Late Bronze Age.