Recenti ricerche sull’età del Rame in Val d’Isarco : Bolzano : con un contributo di Lorna Anguilano sulle analisi chimico-petrografiche di scorie di fusione

The palaeoethnological research in South Tyrol is nowadays, as it is elsewhere, strongly conditioned by a massive, intense and widespread expansion of buildings and infrastructure, which means checking the numerous building sites and road works necessary all year round. Amongst the areas that are mostly effected by this phenomenon, which has obvious repercussions on both the archaeological heritage and the numerous ongoing archaeological discoveries, there is the Middle Isarco Valley and, in particular, the town of Bressanone. Thanks to an existing agreement between the Autonomous Province (of Bolzano) and the Council (of Bressanone) the archaeological checking carried out by the Superintendency in the urban and extraurban areas of the town of Bressanone can be considered total. This checking activity led to the discovery of some new sites, mainly dated back to the Late Copper Age, whose importance lies, first of all, in their foundry craft activities. Two sites, called Albes- land Noflatscher and Millan, both located on the left side of the river Isarco, have shown remains of metallurgic activities. At the Albes site, flat and thin slags were found in the same archaeological level with flint tools of a Late Eneolithic typology. At the Millan site a dumping ground of slags (several thousand weighing almost a ton) dated back to the mid- 3 rd Millennium BC and located in a wide and partly structural depression of the area, testifies indirectly the use in situ of foundry structures for the smelting of copper sulphides. Numerous pottery remains typical for the time and fragments of blowing tools for clay bellows complete the cultural picture. The possibility that the slags and the other archaeological remains were deposited as part of a ritual practice is now the course of study. Large excavations (still ongoing) at Laion in the Isarco Valley led to the recovery of a stele – statue (stone statue) dated to the Eneolithic Period. This statue is stylistically similar to the “Bell Beaker Culture” stela found in Velturno. Both are characterized by the engraved representation of daggers of the “Ciempozuelos” type. This type of dagger is, as everyone knows, typical of the “Bell Beaker Culture” and is different and more recent if compared with the straight based daggers represented on the so called “remedellian” stele – statues. The stele – statue of Laion laid in a secondary position (due to a ritual reuse of the item) within an Iron Age settlement. A terracing structure, dated to the same chronological horizon of the other sites described in this article, has been excavated and documented in the town of Gudon, near Chiusa, on the left hydrographical side of the valley. The structure, considering the lack of material culture remains collected in its archaeological levels, had probably an agricultural use as opposed to being part of a settlement, that would have been in close proximity. In the same context, analyses have been carried out on both: the excavation data and the elaboration of an advanced synthesis on the research done until 1995 in the megalithic area of Velturno-Tanzgasse, on the right hydrographical side of the river Isarco, with the acquisition, amongst other things, of a new series of radio metrical datings related to the using-phase of the ceremonial structures. This phase can be placed manly in the third quarter of the 3rn Millennium BC, in the same chronological belt that characterized the appearance in Northern Italy of the Bell Beaker contexts. In Velturno itself rare fragments of one or more Bell Beakers with comb-decorations were found. Fragments with “strawdecorations” (cylindrical stamp and deep impression) have been found as well as in various sites of Northern Italy as well as in the Florentine area and could historically refer to some sort of contact between the two areas, although this has yet to be ascertained. Not older, even if previous in the stratigraphy, is a dwelling-used phase in which context dozens of fusion slag fragments (copper minerals treatment) have been collected. These fusion slags, although not proving the existence of a foundry structure on site, provide evidence that suggest at least some sort of contact with groups of foundry men.