Punta di Zambrone I

This monograph presents a major part of the scientific results of the archaeological excavations at the Bronze Age settlement site of Punta di Zambrone on the Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria (southern Italy). These excavations were conducted from 2011 to 2013 in an Italian-Austrian cooperation. The book is the first in a series dedicated to the final publication of those excavations and focuses on the later part of the settlement history, i.e. the Recent Bronze Age (13th12th centuries BCE). Major topics include the topography of the site (including a harbour bay), its relative and absolute chronology, investigations into the economic basis of the Bronze Age society (food production, craftwork) and its local, regional and interregional interactions. The new data from Punta di Zambrone are evaluated in comparison with new research results from coeval sites located in southern Italy and Greece, which forms the basis for a historical contextualization of the settlement and thus contributes to the broader reconstruction of Mediterranean history at the end of the second millennium BCE. These coeval sites are presented by their excavators or investigators. The authors conducted geophysical and bathymetric surveys as well as underwater archaeological investigations, typological analyses of artefacts, a definition of the relative and absolute chronology (by radiocarbon dates and comparative stratigraphy), archaeobotanic and archaeozoological studies, aDNA analysis on human bones, strontium isotope analyses on human and animal teeth, chemical and lead isotope analyses on metal artefacts, provenance analyses of pottery vessels, amber and stone artefacts. The analytical methods were applied to artefacts from Punta di Zambrone as well as to comparative finds from coeval sites in Italy and Greece. It is the first time that a Bronze Age settlement in southern Calabria investigated with a wide array of archaeological and archaeometric methods receives final publication.