The Prehistoric Society

Book Reviews

RETHINKING THE NORTH ITALIAN EARLY BY M PEARCE

Accordia Specialist Studies on 17, Accordia Research Institute University of London, 2013. 245pp, 175 illus, 36 col, 153 tables, ISBN 978-1873415-44-3, pb, £36

SOCIAL CHANGE AND TECHNOLOGY IN PREHISTORIC ITALY BY H LONEY

Accordia Specialist Studies on Italy 16, Accordia Research Institute University of London, 2013. 226pp, 33 illus including 11 col, 37 tables, 27 appendices, ISBN 978-1873415-39-9, pb, £36

The Accordia Research Centre of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London has been publishing its Specialist Studies series on Italian archaeology since 1992, coupled with a smaller number of Specialist Studies on the Mediterranean. Together these volumes have presented us with excavation reports, a mass of new data (from radiocarbon dates to metalwork), and thematic studies of a range of themes from religious cult, to gender, ethnicity, urbanism, early states, symbolism, and literacy. This important contribution to the later prehistory of the Mediterranean has been strengthened even further by the latest two Specialist Studies volumes, one (Pearce) a systematic and critical analysis of the radiocarbon chronology of the early Neolithic communities of , and the other (Loney) an analysis of pottery production from sites of successive periods of the in the .

Mark Pearce’s book is timely, as the north of Italy, and especially the valley, have been very much on the margins of Early Neolithic archaeology, given what he describes as the ‘current orthodoxy’ that, in contrast to , wild resources were the basis of subsistence practices. Various authors have used radiocarbon dates from the south to the north of the peninsula, with the Adriatic in the east to the major islands of and in the west, to trace the spread of the Neolithic and the form(s) it took in different regions. This was an important part of larger-scale debates on the spread of the Neolithic and the adoption of agriculture from the eastern through to the western Mediterranean.

The major contribution of this book is the assembly, critique and forensic analysis of the corpus of radiocarbon dates from northern Italy, coupled with Bayesian statistical modeling of these dates on a site-by-site basis. Included here are all the major sites (some with deep stratigraphies) such as Arene Candide, Arma de Nasino, Sidari, Konispol, Grotta di Filiestru, and Corbeddu Cave. Even those dates that are shunned in polite archaeological society because of their early measurement are included: correctly Pearce argues that ‘such dates …stand or fall on the grounds of their fit with the population of dates as a whole’ (p. 18). After a brief introduction to the history of radiocarbon dating as a sequence of three ‘revolutions’ (the third of which is Bayesian analysis), and the impact of C14 dating on the study of Italian prehistory, the bulk of the text (175 out of 210 pages) is devoted to the presentation and analysis of dates for the Later and the beginnings of the Neolithic in three broad regions: the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian seas (Sardinia, Corsica, , ), the Adriatic seaboard (from south to north from Albania/Corfu through to and on the eastern seaboard, and to , and towards the on the western seaboard), and the Po Valley.

The dates for the beginnings of the Neolithic in the Puglian Tavoliere centre on c.6100 cal. BC, while those for the central part of the Po valley are in the mid-sixth millennium cal. BC, but these extremes do not tell the whole story. In the west, there appears to have been a rapid spread to the Tyrrhenian areas and then Liguria possibly by the first century of the sixth millennium and definitely by c.5630 cal. BC. The Adriatic provides an interesting contrast between the eastern seaboard (where the spread goes from Corfu in the second half of the seventh millennium cal. BC, through southern Dalmatia by c.6000 cal. BC to northern Dalmatia and Istria by c. 6050- 5670 cal. BC) and the western seaboard (where the north was not reached until the second half of the sixth millennium cal. BC). There is inter-regional variation in the presence (eastern Liguria- without Early Neolithic sites)/absence (western Liguria- with EN sites) of late Mesolithic sites, some regions have a hiatus between Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic occupation, others have continuous occupation of cave sites from the Late Mesolithic. This variation supports Pearce’s determination to avoid large-scale, polarized interpretations (i.e. colonization vs. local adoption) of the spread of the Neolithic in the Mediterranean, while at the same time recognising that the evidence of any neolithisation of local hunter-gatherers is currently weak. The small-group sizes seen in the archaeological evidence suggest the need for exogamy as local communities sought to maintain reproductive viability.

Stepping beyond the dating evidence and its analysis, Pearce assembles the faunal and floral data from sites such as Arene Candide and Sammardenchia, coupled with the DNA analyses that show that cattle and pig were not European species, to overturn the interpretation that cereal cultivation was not practiced until the Middle Neolithic. Isotopic analyses are not currently available to strengthen this argument, as there is a paucity of Early Neolithic skeletal remains from northern Italy.

Aside from the subject matter and periods under study, Pearce’s research is the outcome of a recent Leverhulme Research Fellowship, while Loney’s volume is a revised version of her University of Pennsylvania PhD thesis awarded in 1995. Although Loney has published parts of the thesis as peer-reviewed and spin-off papers, this volume makes all the data available to the research community at a time when her principal analytical technique has undergone a resurgence of interest and practice.

Loney’s aims are twofold: to describe the production techniques and their variation for pottery from three Italian sites of Middle, Recent and Final Bronze Age collections, and to develop an interpretation of how pottery production was organized during these successive periods. These aims are developed within the context of ideas on the organization of pottery production (and indeed technology as a whole) and its articulation with social, economic and political changes in pre-state societies. Loney begins with a useful and critical presentation of Italian prehistory from the fourth to the first millennia cal. BC. Next she reviews in detail the analytical approaches used in archaeological research on pottery production: these include visual and geochemical methods, ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological studies, and models developed for relating craft production to the development of more ‘complex’ societies (e.g. ceramic ecology, cultural evolution, biological evolution). This review is framed within the context of what Loney sees as a long-held belief that ‘technology drives history’. Central to Loney’s methodology is the use of radiographic analysis (specifically xeroradiography) to identify parts of the pottery production that cannot be seen by visual examination. Samples for analysis are taken from the Middle Bronze Age cave at Grotta dello Sventatoio, the late Terramare settlement at Monte Leoni and the Final Bronze Age settlement of Casale Nuovo.

Loney concludes, on the basis of these site studies that craft production in the Italian Bronze Age was small in scale, technologically non-standardised and organized in family units. Although there was evidence for increases in pottery production, associated with economic intensification, there was no evidence for any reorganization of production techniques. Rather than technology and its organisation being the driver of social, economic and political changes, Loney reverses the arrow and attributes primacy to social choice.

Both of these volumes are welcome additions to the literature on later Italian prehistory. Both make their data available to later prehistorians working in the central Mediterranean and both highlight the contexts and implications of their research projects. Another triumph for Accordia!

Bob Chapman University of Reading

Review received: November 2014

The views expressed in this review are not necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews Editor