Archeometria delle ambre protostoriche: dati acquisiti e problemi aperti

Infrared spectroscopy is a technique that has been successfully used for almost 40 years in the archaeometric study of amber. Only a handful of protohistoric Italian amber objects have been analysed till the beginning of the present investigation, and on the basis of the existing data it is common knowledge that amber was imported from the Baltic area. Infrared spectroscopic investigation on 57 samples from 16 different Italian sites, all but three dated to the Bronze Age, were carried out. The analyses were performed with the DRIFT technique, which shows important advantages with respect to the more diffused FTIR technique, especially because of the low amount of sample needed. In the last 5 years we have developed two spectroscopic databases of geological ambers of well-known origin, one with FTIR spectra that is important for comparison with the literature data, and one with DRIFT spectra, in order to have a good reference for the provenance study. Samples from several different European deposits have been characterized, some of which for the first time, such as those from North and Central Italy. The obtained archaeometric data show that during the Bronze Age a small amount of non Baltic amber, probably extracted from unidentified local deposits, was used, together with a large quantity of Baltic amber imported from Northern Europe. In the site of Poggiomarino (Naples), Baltic and non Baltic ambers were used in comparable amounts, showing that even during Iron Age local amber deposits were exploited.