Ceramic Ethnoarchaeometry in Western Sardinia: Production of Cooking Ware at Pabillonis

Ceramic ethnoarchaeology has been used to explore fully the chaîne opératoire and to understand all of the stages and factors involved in pottery production, such as raw material selection or paste recipes used by the potters. This work presents the results of the application of compositional analysis undertaken in the village of Pabillonis (western Sardinia, Italy), the main cooking ware production centre of the island. Pottery and local clays have been characterized using a combination of analytical techniques. By integrating the ethnographic information and the archaeometric approach, it was possible to reconstruct the operational sequence, exploring the relationship between the processing of raw materials and the functionality of the final products, and the intra‐production compositional variability.     

Spain’s Military Campaigns in Sardinia and Sicily (1717–1720) According to Jaime Miguel de Guzmán-Dávalos,Marquis of la Mina

The Colección de cuadros y planos sobre de Cerdeña y Sicilia en los anõs 1717, 1720 is an archive of military maps complementing the Memorias written by Jaime Miguel de Guzmán-Dávalos, second marquis of la Mina, who had participated in these campaigns. The Colección illustrates some of the most important events of the Italian campaigns against the Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France, Austria and the Dutch Republic (1717–1720). Comparison of the maps and other drawings with details in la Mina’s Memorias allows us to clarify his main objective in compiling the text, which was to record the operations faithfully for use in military education.     

The distribution and sources of archaeological obsidian from southern France

One-hundred-and-sixty-two pieces of obsidian have been found at 50 archaeological localities in southern France. The distribution is concentrated in the Rhône Valley, but includes sites in Drôme and in southwest France. The obsidian is mainly from sites of the Chassey culture (4th and 3rd millennium Neolithic), but there is one Impressed Ware site (Early Neolithic) and four Copper Age sites with obsidian. Only a small proportion of the obsidian (31 pieces) consists of waste pieces, providing little evidence for on-site working. 10 pieces of obsidian were analysed by instrumental neutron activation analysis to determine their geological provenance. Seven pieces proved to be from the Sardinian SA source, one from Lipari, and two from Pantelleria. Chronologically there is some division between sources used: all three pieces of Liparian obsidian so far identified from southern France, in this work and by earlier researchers, belong to Early Chassey contexts, and the two Pantellerian pieces are from a Copper Age dolmen. Sardinian and Liparian obsidian probably reached France by way of northern Italy. where both types were in use in contemporary cultures. The two Pantellerian pieces are evidence of some type of contact between France and the southern Mediterranean in the Copper Age, despite earlier suggestions of a very restricted distribution for the Pantellerian source. Obsidian was probably imported to southern France with other goods since the small amounts used would not warrant a separate trading network for obsidian alone.