Space, structures and society in the ditched village of Masseria Candelaro, on the Apulian Tavoliere, Italy

The settlement of Masseria Candelaro is one of the ditched villages that characterise Early and Middle Neolithic of the Apulian Tavoliere area (Southern Italy).These villages are organised in one or more defensive ditches enclosing inhabited areas which are partitioned by wide empty spaces. The interpretation of the original function of the ditches has been many and sometimes contrasting, from defensive or hydraulic use, to sign territoriality and/or strengthen the cohesion of the group. Sometimes Neolithic people re-cycled the ditches as burial ground when their original function was over. The paper is mainly focused on the archaeological data resulting from the Masseria Candelaro excavation and aims to offer a brief overview of the emergence of increasingly formalized burial rituals and the spatial relationships between graves versus different domestic structures in the settlement.