Ricerc@Sapienza

The reference to recovery and resilience is not trivial: it is impossible not to focus on the reappraisal of an interrupted field program, after one year of desktop work and analyses.

The project targets the site of Cannatello (AG, Sicily), integrating excavation data and analysis inside the whole
Mediterranean Sea framework. The project started in 2017/18; excavations are planned until 2022/23, plus 2 years of final study.
Cannatello is one of the crucial Italian sites to study the "boom-and-crisis" phase of the Mediterranean Late Bronze Age (LBA: 14th-12th cent. BCE).
Site finds flow from Sardinia, inner Sicily, Malta, Crete, Greece and Cyprus, including the peculiar local production of pottery with distinctive Nuragic shapes.

The 2021-2023 campaigns will complete the 3 field research pillars:
i- Environment, i.e. geomorphological coastal and fluvial valleys evolution, as for climatic and anthropic influence;
ii- Stratigraphy, i.e. completion of 4 ongoing excavation trenches: new invaluable finds associations and site information are emerging; the systematic study and sampling of the finds from past excavations (1989-2001) is almost finished;
iii- Connections, i.e. the wider Mediterranean network of the "boom-and-crisis" years; social and political analysis of the period. This 3rd pillar is developed through archaeometry and study missions in Crete, Cyprus, Sardinia and Spain, with international cooperation.

The excavation results are groundbreaking as for the entanglements of the site in Sardinian and Aegean, Cypriot and Levantine connectivity: it is precisely embedded in the debate of the traditions on the "Sea Peoples", around 1200 BCE.

The improved knowledge of the site, in its precisely framed environmental and socio-cultural context, is contributing to
a renewed phase of debate about LBA processes in the Mediterranean.
The project has been granted financial support by the "Grandi Scavi" call (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020) and by INSTAP (2018, 2019, 2020).