Ricerc@Sapienza

During the 6th - 4th millennia BC contacts between the Aegean and southern Italy already took place, yet, being mostly testified by broad similarities in the material culture, these still remain difficult to define.
Starting from the mid-3rd millennium BC analogies between various types of artefacts occurring in both areas became closer, making it possible to hypothesise movements of small groups of individuals and to recognise both the areas where they came from and landing-places. In particular, movements of small groups from the Peloponnese and the Ionian Islands towards southern Apulia and chiefly to Sicily, the Aeolian and the Maltese Islands are likely to have happened. This phenomenon was firstly hypothesised by L. Bernabò Brea and M. Cavalier several years ago, but our knowledge of it has deeply increased over the last decades.
We have already discussed this subject in the Hesperos Conference and other occasions, yet in this paper we stress the phenomenon of the retention of Aegean elements in the furthest areas these arrived to, that is the Aeolian and Maltese archipelagos, long after they had disappeared in the areas they originated from.
We attempt to analyse the cultural aspects that may give evidence of the retention of Aegean-type elements in Early Bronze Age central Mediterranean (iconographies of ships, artefacts related to spinning and weaving, pottery styles) and their lifespan. In this respect, the bossed bone plaques represent a different case. Despite probably having an Aegean origin as well, they were not reproduced in Malta (where only one item occurs) and the Aeolian Islands and only sporadically occur in southern Apulia. Conversely, their production flourished in eastern Sicily, in a cultural context where the occurrence of other features of eastern origin was somehow limited. Is this a case of retaining an element that was more an exotic prestige good than an identity marker?
We will also try to discuss Ethno-anthropologic evidence of behavioural patterns related to maintaining cultural identities that might help our understanding of movements and cross-cultural encounters in ancient societies.