L’archeometallurgia preistorica nel Mediterraneo centrale. Bilanci e programmi agli inizi del XXI secolo

The aim of the article is to foster an interdisciplinary debate regarding the direction that studies of early metallurgy in the central Mediterranean region (from the late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, c4500-1650 BC) should be taking in the next decade. It is argued in particular that early metallurgical research has followed an idiosyncratic course due to the sway held on the discipline by Idealism, an influential philosophical movement that greatly hindered the development of science-based archaeology for most of the 20th century. The last fifteen years, however, have witnessed an unprecedented if rather tumultuous expansion of metallurgical research, and important advances have been made in the chronology and chaîne opératoire of early metal technology and artefacts. Yet it is the authors’ contention that, in order to reap full benefits from the recent disciplinary growth, an explicit research agenda must be set. This is to be grounded in the cross-disciplinary examination of metals based on archaeological as well as scientific methods of analysis.