Tipocronologia dei manufatti nei corredi funerari dal Neolitico all'antica età del Bronzo in Italia settentrionale

The project’s aim is a typological and chronological study of all the artifacts found in graves dating from Neolithic to Early Bronze Age in Northern Italy. As we have a large amount of data, this research is based only on what have been already published in the archaeological literature. The wide chronological range examined allows us to follow the evolution of some features in the funerary practice from Neolithic to Copper Age (ages that shared some traits of ideology and ritual behavior), through the study of grave goods. On this regard, the inclusion of Early Bronze Age in the study is very important as funerary rituals and some features of material culture were very similar to Copper Age ones. One of the main problems was the selection of the artifacts we want to study. In fact, in case of funerary sites with also a housing or ritual/cultic function, or in case of destroyed burials, it is not easy (and sometimes it is impossible) to recognize which elements belonged to grave goods. So the first section of this paper is dedicated to the criteria we used for the choice of artifacts to analyze: the history of archaeological research on the most important burials in northern Italy is summarized in the first chapter, then we discuss criteria used for the development of the typological study. The second section focuses on typology and chronology of each “class of artifacts” we collected. We start from pottery (both vessels and other objects), then the chipped stone (arrowheads, daggers, tools), the polished stone (axes and chisels), metals (daggers, axes, tools) and ornaments, divided by raw material. Eventually, we deal with all the objects which don’t fall in any of the categories we have proposed. This sample of artifacts, linked with the study we made, is functional to many developments that will be pursued elsewhere, through the investigation of specific issues.