La metallurgia preistorica del rame nell’Italia nord-orientale: quadro d’insieme e recenti sviluppi.

Prehistoric copper metall urgy in North-Eastern Italy: overview and recent developments - The archaeometric investigation of ancient Alpine metallurgy is a topic of great interest. Recently a number of novel activities by different research groups, including the measurement of Pb isotopic ratios to determine the metal provenance, have expanded the more traditional chemical and metallographic analyses. Within this frame, our research group in the last ten years has devoted considerable effort in the systematic analysis of Alpine copper resources, towards the development of a database of geochemical and isotopic representing the reference for provenancing archaeological manufacts. Furthermore the collaboration with several Museums, Superintendencies, and Universities allowed a number of Eneolithic and Bronze Age objects to be analysed from the Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Emilia Romagna. Many of the analysed objects from the Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto regions, plus some objects from Emilia Romagna result to be made with Alpine copper. These data are complemented by the archaeometric study of copper smelting slags of Eneolithic and Recent-Final Bronze Age from Trentino and Alto-Adige, which yields information on the copper production process and the local organization of the mine exploitation in the different periods. For the first time, the reliable traceability of South-Eastern Alpine copper in the slags and the metal objects indicates an early, massive and continuous exploitation of copper sources in the area from prehistory through the late Bronze Age.