Conclusioni

While in other archaeologies the concept of culture has been heavily criticized, in Italian Bronze Age studies the terms “cultura” and facies continue to be frequently used, even interchangeably. Little debate exists about their use and interpretation, although often implicitly these typological entities are considered true historical agents. This volume aimed for a state of the art of these concepts in Italian Bronze Age studies. Italian specialists of Protohistory explicitly discussed here the use and interpretation of facies and “culture” in their region, or within their field of expertise. In this conclusion, we attempt to distinguish a leitmotiv in their opinions. There is general consensus about the fact that the concepts of facies and culture can be used as heuristic instruments to bring order into the large amount of archaeological data of the Italian Bronze Age, although it is clear that other non-typological techniques should be more frequently involved to document underlying variability: archaeometry and experimental archaeology, GIS and network analyses, DNA-analyses, etc. Many authors see facies as typological entities, whereas cultures include also other elements. Most authors emphasise that facies and cultures cannot simply be interpreted as past human groups. They do not reflect identities, but rather indicate different interactions between groups and individuals. Bronze Age people were most probably not aware of the distribution of types of which a facies is composed, but could use one or more of these elements to construct their identities.