Lithic Raw Materials Procurement Networks in Corsica in the 2nd and 1st Millennia: The I Casteddi Case

International audienceI Casteddi (Tavera, Corse-du-Sud) was occupied continuously from the Middle Bronze Age to the second Iron Age. Among the artefacts unearthed, several hundred lithic obsidian and rhyolite pieces are attested. This evidence, in a protohistoric context, allows us to examine the continued use of stone tools and to interrogate these raw materials’ procurement networks during a time when new circulation systems in the western Mediterranean become necessary.The obsidian recovered at the site mainly originate from Sardinia. The SC type from Monte Arci represents the large majority, while two artefacts are still of uncertain origin. These results could attest to a continuity of exchanges within the Corsican-Sardinian block. The data obtained on the rhyolites indicate that this raw material could come from at least 25 different Corsican sources. This considerable diversity shows a high mobility of the community. The mountains in the centre of the island, with strong pastoral and hunting potential, seem to be a privileged procurement area.The dichotomy between the lithic procurement patterns, exogenous and therefore maritime for obsidian and allochthonous and mountainous for the rhyolite, is interesting. Do we have two separate and contemporary networks, one linked to long-distance exchanges and the other to the mobility of the group within its territory? Or are those differences chronologically distinct and attest to the changes in the networks of the late Neolithic and Bronze Age? Further studies will have to be conducted to better define the evolution of the exchanges and mobilities on the island during the Bronze Age