Landscapes of Control and Connection. Reconstructing Mobility among Apulian Late Prehistoric Communities, Italy

The region of Apulia, southern Italy, is especially interesting during early prehistory. Due to its fertile soils and its abundance of valuable raw materials, especially high-quality flint and obsidian sources off the coast, the density of settlements is very high from the earliest Neolithic onwards. In a selected area in this region, an ongoing project situated at the universities of Münster, Germany, and Bologna, Italy, and the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Barletta-Andria-Trani e Foggia, Italy, is currently dealing with the comprehension of how prehistoric communities moved in their territory and how they exploited the landscape during the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age. The region was chosen because it played an important role as a bridge between the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the inner peninsular areas during pre- and protohistoric times, thus permitting a mutual exchange of ideas, artefacts, and people. Since the landscape and human presence are linked via site distribution, the investigations comprise visibility analysis and least-cost path analysis in order to understand the networks of ties and relationships between sites. This will be fundamental to comprehend how the ancient communities exploited the landscape, and to determine the reasons for choices of settlement, also in relation to local and foreign influences that began to emerge from the Late Neolithic onward. Hence, the research aims to introduce new ways to analyse the landscape in relation to human frequentation and ways of communication, both terrestrial and aquatic. The landscape is viewed as a repository for natural resources, and its analysis can be tied to questions regarding the exchange of cultural resources like ideas, practices and techniques.