Materiali vetrosi protostorici della Sardegna: indagini archeometriche e confronto analitico con reperti coevi

A project focused on the study of early vitreous materials and amber from Italy has been developed in cooperation with the Italian Institute of Pre- and Proto-history. The results of the archaeometric investigation of the early vitreous materials in Sardinia are reported in the preset work. About 100 samples of faïence, glassy faïence and glasses from 14 different Sardinian sites have been selected for the analyses in cooperation with the archaeologists studying the materials (P. Bellintani, A. Usai and M.A. Fadda). The Nuragic vitreous materials date from the Italian Middle Bronze Age 3 (MBA3) to the Early Iron Age (EIA). The majority of the beads exhibit simple typology, the correlation with coeval material may be done therefore mainly on the base of the chemical, textural and mineralogical composition. The chemical composition was investigated by EPMA and SEM-EDS; whereas the textural study was performed by Digital Image Processing (DIP) of the backscattered electrons SEM images. A group of black faience, characterized by a very high content of Mn and Fe is present and do not show compositional correlation with known beads from continental Italy, Egypt and Near East. All the Sardinian glass beads have HMG and LMG composition. Surprisingly no LMHK typical of the North Italian and Central European Final Bronze Age (FBA) productions are present. Yellow lead antimonite glass with HMG composition, known in Egypt since XIV cent. BC, have been detected in Sardinia as early as the Recent Bronze Age proving a rapid diffusion of this material in the West Mediterranean area, whereas in Central and Northern Italy yellow glass appears only in the VIII cent. BC and are LMG glasses, such as the FBA-EIA yellow glass from Sardinia. The analysed finds from Sardinia include also: amber coloured beads, Co end Cu blue beads, colourless glasses, and turquoise beads with eyes decoration. The glasses generally do not exhibit chemical correlations with the coeval continental Italian vitreous materials, but in some case the Sardinian glasses show similarity with Egyptian and/or Near East finds, whereas in other case display particular composition, that do not have to date clear analytical comparison.