Mobility studies in the Sabina region (central Italy): new results from pottery and clay deposits analyses of Battifratta Cave (RI)

Mobility through raw material resources is a central topic of the archaeological panorama. In recent years, multidisciplinary approaches to material culture analysis have allowed us to gain a better understanding of past societies and their interactions with the environment. Multi-scalar approaches on pottery and clay enable to answer many research questions like the raw material provenance, technology of pottery production, exchange networks, and human mobility. This study focuses on the provenance of the clay used in the Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery production at Battifratta Cave in the Sabina region (central Italy). The mineralogical composition of the pottery was determined through petrographic analyses in thin sections and, then, compared to the results obtained from clay samples collected from the site’s surroundings. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was also used to characterize clay samples and Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery. The goal of this work is to go further into this little-known area of central Italy and discuss its prehistoric peopling, exchange routes and mobility. The Sabina region is, indeed, strikingly important due to its role in connecting the middle Adriatic and the middle Tyrrhenian areas.