Presupposti teorici e metodi operativi per l’identificazione delle caratteristiche delle comunità dell’età del Bronzo in Italia settentrionale

In the debate about culture and facies, the discussion focuses almost exclusively on the problem of their effectiveness in historical representation or on the inability to define their limits or characteristics. Can we accept an abstract configuration of facies by refusing to define their social and anthropological characteristics or can we imagine a better representation of them by dealing with the adopted methodologies and techniques of analysis? This paper presents an overview of the techniques and methods applicable to the analysis of cultural aspects and how the various aggregations of Bronze Age communities can be represented. After a discussion of the assumptions that help us to define the social organisation and the relationship between communities, resources and territory, we face the most useful methods to find the interactions between settlements or between regions with similar characteristics. Taking into consideration the techniques of spatial analysis and the classification of archaeological markers, a methodology for recognising cultural groups, based on GIS and databases, is proposed, which allow us to identify the collective memory and the heritage of each aggregation of individuals. With these methods it appears more effective to be able to discuss the role and meaning of facies, cultures and other possible social and economic aggregations, starting from the archaeological documentation.