Archaeometric Investigation for Provenance Studies about Copper Metallurgy in the Phoenician and Punic Cultures

The doctoral thesis regards an innovative method based on an elaboration of chemical-physical data in terms of statistics and georeferencing of copper-based alloys artefacts in the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions which underwent the influence of Phoenician-Punic cultures. Fundamental aim of the research is the localization of areas where this influence is evidenced by the presence of artefacts which characteristics can be attributable to Phoenician and Punic presence. The chronological range considered is mostly between the Late Bronze Age (LBA) and the Early and Middle Iron Age (EIA- MIA), even if more ancient and more recent periods have been considered for coparison. The study of Phoenician-Punic archaeological sites, trade routes and the type of bronze processing have been considered broadly throughout the Mediterranean Basin and surrounding areas (but also atlantic and continental areas), leading to the production of databases containing information on archaeological settlements, mines and ore basins, and compositional data coming from literature or obtained from the analyses of bronze artefacts (SEM-EDS and EDXRF analyses), managed through an unprecedented application of Geographic Information System (GIS tool). So the GIS application includes data coming from archaeometric analytical sessions and from analogous researches published on specialised literature, carried out on samples of different typologies. The collected databases were elaborated on the basis of statistics-mathematic methods, in particular Principal Component Analysis (PCA), while frequency distributions and Box-Whisker diagrams have been used for the study of smaller datasets. The production of manufactures (small size metal statuary), connected to religious worship, were addressed in Alentejo, Portugal (Evora and Alcacer do Sal) and in Sardinia, Italy (Cagliari and Sassari). The mining and the production of slags and semi-finished products have been examined for Moroccan area (especially in Meknes Region) while metal artefacts of Roman period from Volubilis archaeological settlement have been analysed in the light of a probable technological conservatism between Punics and Romans. The production of bronze Punic coins was deepened for a private collection (Collection M. Viola) and through the study of Punic and neo-Punic finds in France, Belgium and in lesser extent in Northern continental Europe areas. The results have been interpreted with a unique perspective, so as to allow a new vision on the Phoenician presence an bronze production in the areas where they settled. Further result is the elaboration of a useful tool for the archaeological research that is reproducible in several fields, even different from the ancient metallurgy studies.