L’età del Rame in Liguria

There is very little archaeological evidence for Copper Age material culture in Liguria. The paper begins with a review of our knowledge of: lithics, beads, pottery, copper artefacts and statue-stele. Close relations are indicated with Provence and northern Italy, but also long-distance maritime contacts with central and southern Italy. More detailed discussion is dedicated to specific themes: 1) evidence for the clearance by fire of upland woodland for pastoralism, also documented by the occupation of upland caves by humans and their livestock; 2) fourth and third millennium BC copper mining at Monte Loreto and Libiola, the oldest copper mines in western Europe; copper production at Monte Loreto continued for some 3,500 years rather than 1,500 years as first thought; 3) contemporary chert quarrying in Valle Lagorara, which is strangely inaccessible and isolated, and raises the question as to why other chert more accessible outcrops, common in eastern Liguria, were not quarried; 4) a new burial rite replacing the individual burials of the Neolithic, multiple burials in caves by endogamous groups, whose burial practices seem to have been very complex, involving secondary burial; 5) evidence for successful surgery on a skull fracture at Garbu du Surdu; 6) lead isotope evidence for the provenance of five copper artefacts, an awl from the Arene Candide cave, a dagger from the Pollera cave and a blade, a rivet and an awl from the Da Prima Ciappa burial cave in the Val Frascarese, none of which are compatible with the copper ores of Liguria, but may indicate a trade in metals with Tuscany or southern France. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of this finding, and the poor evidence in general for the Copper Age in Liguria, proposing that the copper extracted from the eastern Liguria mines may have been used elsewhere, perhaps even central and southern Italy