Il ciottolo con iscrizione mi tular da Spina: problemi di contesto e di interpretazione

This contribution offers an updated critical reassessment of the pebble with inscription mi tular from Spina. The characteristics of the document are analysed for the first time, offering detailed observations on the support, the traces of workmanship and the manufacturing characterstics of the inscription as well as the mark on the extremity, which has always been interpreted as a cross. Epigraphic analysis, on the one hand, raises the terminus post quem of the paleographic characteristics of the inscription to the end of the 5th century BC and, on the other hand, places it within an Archaic epigraphic tradition on stone. Subsequently, starting from the archival data regarding its discovery, it is determined that the artifact cannot be linked to a defined context, but instead in a general way to the excavation activities south of the so-called Canale Collettore between 1978 and 1980. It is then placed within the framework of cobblestones with crosses interpretd or interpretable as cippi decussati, which are critically re-examined.